5 ms·
Why Doesn't US Make 2 Year Warranty on Products Mandatory Like EU?
- ng-user 9y agoVastly different set of principles clearly.
- martin_bech 9y agoThe products and prices are basically the same, so why you guys dont insist on a 2 year warranty, is puzzling to me.
- foobarbazetc 9y agoPeople care more about how much money companies make than their own well being as customers. It’s weird.
- brianwawok 9y agoWhy doesn't the EU pay developers 6 figures?
- lewisj489 9y ago> Why doesn't the EU pay developers 6 figures? .. They do?
- nicolasd 9y agoMaybe in Switzerland - but not in Germany / Austria. If there are so many companies that do this, please tell me :)
- tinus_hn 9y agoIt’s crazy expensive to live in Switzerland, so you better have a big salary.
- s3nnyy 9y agoThe costs don't hurt, because everyone's pay is good. (Example: Cleaning personnel and waiters make more after taxes than engineers in Germany...) and taxes are so much better than anywhere really. And you meet smart people mostly.
- s3nnyy 9y agoYup. It's kind of the only place that in Europe that pays Bay Area salaries ("8 reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in tech": https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-to-switzerland-to-work-in-it-c7ac18af4f90 https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t... - most of the things in this three year old post are still valid)
- basedfahayek 9y agoFreedom in principle is important in the US. Why can’t I sell a shoddy product? Why can’t I buy a shoddy product?
- csurya 9y agolooks like there is a dark side to the word freedom.
- basedfahayek 9y agoHow do you mean?
- csurya 9y agofreedom to do bad things.
- unholiness 9y agoMarkets with imperfect information are less efficient. If everyone knew which products were shit, then yeah, warrantees do take away freedom. But by providing a floor on product quality, consumers are freed from needing to do a large amount of research to determine which products will last (research, which, might I add, is still imperfect. Even the best products have defects protected by warrantees). Also, warrantees force companies to bear the full cost of their negative externalities. In lots of markets, companies will come out ahead by not fixing or replacing your product (brand damage < actual damage), so those businesses are motivated directly into misleading consumers into buying worse products. Sounds obvious, but clearly that's not good for a society in the long run.
- mathewsanders 9y agoNew Zealand has the consumer guarantees act that requires companies to provide repairs or replacements for goods for a reasonable duration. https://www.govt.nz/browse/consumer-rights-and-complaints/consumer-rights-and-complaints/your-rights-even-if-you-dont-have-a-warranty/ https://www.govt.nz/browse/consumer-rights-and-complaints/co... I used this with my first MacBook when the trackpad stopped working outside the default period. Rather than being based on a fixed period of time it’s based on the expected quality of the product- because Apple computers are a lot more expensive than competitors it’s assumed that Apple are selling a higher quality/more durable product that should last for a reasonable period of time. Unfortunately Apple doesn’t have any NZ offices so I had to deal with Australian office that took several letters to convince them they needed to make the repair under New Zealand law. In the end we negotiated and I got free replacement parts and service under a $100 service fee.
- jklein11 9y agoDo you know the name of the EU provision that makes 2 year warranties on products mandatory?
- tho99 9y agoIt's name is Directive 99/44/EG. Here is the link to the english HTML version http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:31999L0044 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:319... Unfortunately it is not that simple with with the two years. The directive states that a good needs to confirm with the contract at the time of sale. So the seller is only liable for a lack of conformity with the contract which was present at the time the goods were delivered. And that's the point were one needs to pay attention. For the first six month any fault of the product - if it is required by the contract explicitly or implicitly - the seller needs to prove that the fault didn't exist at the time of delivery. After the six month period the consumer needs to prove this fact. So there are 2 years theoretically but in practice it is not that easy.
- M2Ys4U 9y agoThat should be Directive 99/44/EC, with a C on the end, also known as the "Consumer Rights Directive"
- SamReidHughes 9y agoU.S. citizen here. The products I buy are working great, and I get cheap stuff. No need for mandatory warranties.
- tinus_hn 9y agoIf the products are so great it wouldn’t cost anything to offer 2 years of warranty since they’d never break anyway. But they do.
- SamReidHughes 9y agoYes it would cost a bunch, because many users suck at taking care of their cheap stuff, they don't have any sense of stress their mishandling puts on things, or because they're plain scammers. It's a risk companies and sellers don't need, especially small ones, and the benefit is that they can make stuff cheaper, sell stuff cheaper, and people can buy stuff cheaper. One of the many reasons median Americans enjoy a higher material standard of living than people in Europe.
- csurya 9y agoCan you state 5 examples of products which you think are working great for more than a year and are cheap which you would buy without any warranty? i am sure we all would be so happy to buy them.
- SamReidHughes 9y agoI generally don't look at the warranties of products, so, literally everything I've ever bought except for my car.
- futhey 9y agoConsumer protection and regulation have declined in popularity in the US.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]