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>I am absolutely going to report Microsoft’s Xbox to the FTC for their egregious Magnuson-Moss violations. Maybe that stupid sticker will finally disappear I s

>I am absolutely going to report Microsoft’s Xbox to the FTC for their egregious Magnuson-Moss violations. Maybe that stupid sticker will finally disappear I sell video games and consoles for a living, and probably repair about 20-30 of them each month. Based on my experience, the reasons that Microsoft don't want you poking around in your Xbox when it's under warranty are completely valid. For any console that hasn't been tampered with, the fault is almost always one of only two or three things that can be diagnosed nearly instantly and repaired in around 15-30 minutes with a near-100% success rate. For a console that has been tampered with by an end-user, suddenly the list of things that could have gone wrong multiplies by an order of magnitude. The diagnostic procedure goes from a simple 1:1 mapping of symptom to fix to a broad tree of debugging steps. The total process can easily take multiple hours and end up nowhere, depending on how many YouTube videos and Reddit threads the previous owner followed blindly. Of course, the consumer is not going to admit that they're an idiot who transformed their console from a simple fix to something that's beyond economic repair, so either Microsoft has to provide them with a brand new machine or they will face legal action/scathing reviews online. Short of warranty stickers, what are Microsoft to do?

gchamonlive 5y ago
> Short of warranty stickers, what are Microsoft to do? Make opening their products accessible so that people can do it without damaging what they own. PCs are like that. Car parts have no such warranty stickers (that I am aware of). Stickers are much more cultural than actually preventing damage. Furthermore, you can have stickers that decay over time and void your warranty without you even touching them (those nefarious apple humidity stickers for instance). It is entertaining to see Steve from gamer's nexus bashing warranty stickers at every opportunity.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  > Make opening their products accessible so that people can do it without damaging what they own. PCs are like that. Car parts have no such warranty stickers (that I am aware of). Soon that will be a bad example! Cars are quickly moving in this terrible direction. You used to be able to wrench them yourself, but every model year there is less and less serviceable by your friendly shade-tree mechanic. If the manufacturers are not stopped, we'll soon need to take our cars to the "Authori$ed Repair" centers or Dealer$hips to perform even basic maintenance.
  - yurishimo 5y ago
    This is true, but also many cars, especially in the electric space, are extremely reliable apart from battery degradation and UV damage. Not saying you shouldn’t be able to get independent repairs, but more reliable cars mean less overall maintenance and I’m willing to pay slightly more at the less frequent service interval.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      > This is true, but also many cars, especially in the electric space, are extremely reliable apart from battery degradation and UV damage. This is going to end soon, as EVs gain more traction. The end goal of value engineering in businesses under competitive pressure is to create a product that's as cheap to make as possible - meaning products evolve to be the worst possible garbage that still clears the "fit to function" bar. EVs don't break much because they're a new class of technologies. Companies will continue to "optimize" them by removing the amount and quality of materials going into their cars, until they start to break just as much as regular cars.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  Fair point with the car example. I guess Microsoft could just suck it up and refuse to repair consoles under warranty if the user FUBARs them through bad repairs. They wouldn't be happy, but car people seem to be able to live with it.
  - arghwhat 5y ago
    In the EU, home or third party repair of a car cannot itself void a warranty. Microsoft would have to diagnose the problem as being outside the warranty. On the other hand, if repair is easy for third parties, warranty becomes far less important.
    - yellowapple 5y ago
      > On the other hand, if repair is easy for third parties, warranty becomes far less important. Exactly. Not a single car I've owned has been under warranty, and that's been entirely fine by me, because I can always take it to a shop or take it to a mechanically-inclined friend or fix it myself. Likewise with desktops and laptops; there's been no need for a warranty if I can fix it myself, and until recently (what with the "let's make everything as pointlessly thin as possible" craze) that's almost always been the case.
- nomel 5y ago
  > Make opening their products accessible so that people can do it without damaging what they own. I think this misses the point that the problem is the unqualified tampering with the internals, not removing the case so you can access them.
  - gchamonlive 5y ago
    Accessibility is not only about opening a case, but accessing things that require maintenance, like coolers. It seems unreasonable to me that manufacturers prevent users from even cleaning their devices without voiding warranty. On top of that, stickers are a lazy answer to the problem of damaging an equipment because of the so called unqualified tempering. An appropriate answer to that in my opinion would be to make parts cheap and available so that users can go to a third party workshop to have their systems cleaned, checked and repaired, so they don't have to do it themselves. This is why right to repair is also important.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      The point of Magnuson-Moss is that cleaning your device doesn’t void the warranty (assuming the warranty issue doesn’t arise from the cleaning). Removing a sticker that says “warranty void if sticker removed” doesn’t void your warranty.
    - nomel 5y ago
      My comment's context was the response to AussieWog93 original comment. I think his point is that unqualified tampering with the internals probably should void the warranty. A user is qualified to clean the cooler, and do other basic maintenance. A good example is when someone follows YouTube videos to mod their xbox with 1/4 inch wood burning tool rather than a soldering iron.
- dint 5y ago
  Further, provide documentation and support for, and sell spare parts to, users who want to fix their consoles (at least, in the case of procedures that a user could reasonably perform) I'm a home bicycle mechanic, and all manufacturers of bike components do this.
- lordlimecat 5y ago
  >you can have stickers that decay over time and void your warranty They claim it voids your warranty. It does not. This is an important distinction. Ask them for the warranty repair, if they refuse send a demand letter. If they blow you off take them to small claims court.
mycall 5y ago
The right to repair also means if you break it, you own both halves. It is the right to risk. If I want to run SteamOS on an Xbox, let me try at least. If I succeed, let me resell the modified form. Buyer Beware in the social network age. Don't make that illegal.
colechristensen 5y ago
>For any console that hasn't been tampered with Why shouldn't I be able to "tamper" with something that I own? If they weren't so hostile to modification and repair, the failure rate of people trying to do things themselves would go down quite a lot.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  >Why shouldn't I be able to "tamper" with something that I own? Of course you should be able to. You shouldn't expect someone else to repair it for free when you botch up the job completely, though. >If they weren't so hostile to modification and repair, the failure rate of people trying to do things themselves would go down quite a lot. Having opened up consoles from the NES era right through the Xbone, I don't think it's fair to say they're hostile to repair. There is a good supply for just about every part that fails commonly in every console from the last 35 years. Anti-repair technology like serialization is limited to the parts that could be comandeered to enable "backups", and the systems themselves are fairly simple for a skilled person to navigate through. Ribbons will typically have clips at both ends (DS being the notable exception) and common "problem parts like" fans, laser modules and HDDs are always easy to remove and replace (with the exception of the laser/HDD in the OG Xbox). The newer consoles do use BGA and 4+ layer boards, but that's to be expected as it keeps the BOM cost and size down.
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    > You shouldn't expect someone else to repair it for free Why are you repairing anything for free? This really sounds like a you problem. Stand up for yourself, charge reasonable rates and stop calling people idiots.
    - notriddle 5y ago
      Because you have a warranty contract to fulfill.
      - guerrilla 5y ago
guerrilla 5y ago
So? Charge more. It's none of yoir business. Also, don't call them idiots. They took a risk for a reason, which is entirely rational.
- names_are_hard 5y ago
  This. Your customers are not idiots, they're non-experts who chose to try to repair something on their own, possibly learning something in the process. Good for them! Sometimes they might succeed, sometimes they get stuck and bring it in to a professional. You are entitled to tell them, in a non-accusatory tone, that due to previous repair work that was attempted the job will take longer and you charge by the hour. That's the risk they accepted when trying to DIY and there's nothing wrong with that.
seer 5y ago
What you say is very valid - You get stuff you own and under warranty repaired for cheaper. But if that all is true, wouldn’t it be better if that list of problems/solutions were forced to be public? And people would be left to try, if they wanted to, to fix it themselves? I personally think Governments should encourage this kind of endeavors from their citizens as that fosters the kind of people who could become better innovators and ultimately benefitting all. Otherwise you benefit the company that produced it and maybe licensed repair shops. I know it’s supposed to benefit the consumer in the end for cheaper prices, but I have a feeling this is not what ends up happening and corporations and middle men eat those profits. If there is one thing cursory observation of global economics makes obvious, it is that states that have more entrepreneurs and innovators become the best to live in in the long term, and I would imagine they would attempt to craft their laws to encourage that.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  >I personally think Governments should encourage this kind of endeavors from their citizens as that fosters the kind of people who could become better innovators and ultimately benefitting all. I definitely get where you're coming from. Personally, I got into electronics because my Nintendo DS broke and my parents wouldn't buy me a new one. I now have a EEE degree and a pair of businesses that I would have never been able to set up without the STEM knowledge that I was forced to learn to get emulators on my PSP etc. Publishing good repair guides would definitely be a positive step in the right direction that encourages more kids to do the same and actually succeed. The knowledge out there on Reddit, YouTube and forums is mostly incorrect, harmful and spread by people who don't actually perform the repairs themselves. iFixit is good but sparse, especially for older hardware. I've thought about uploading some videos to YouTube going over both the theory and practice of diagnosis/repair, but I doubt I'm the first person to come up with this idea despite not being able to find any of them. I suspect that the algorithm will favour content from creators with high production values, good presenting skills and a regular upload schedule over and above expertise in an extremely specific area of electronics repair.
ballenf 5y ago
Your example makes the opposite case: it seems trivially easy to see whether a failure is the result of user error (legitimately invalidating the warranty) or inherent defect/failure.

gchamonlive 5y ago

> Short of warranty stickers, what are Microsoft to do? Make opening their products accessible so that people can do it without damaging what they own. PCs are like that. Car parts have no such warranty stickers (that I am aware of). Stickers are much more cultural than actually preventing damage. Furthermore, you can have stickers that decay over time and void your warranty without you even touching them (those nefarious apple humidity stickers for instance). It is entertaining to see Steve from gamer's nexus bashing warranty stickers at every opportunity.

ryandrake 5y ago
> Make opening their products accessible so that people can do it without damaging what they own. PCs are like that. Car parts have no such warranty stickers (that I am aware of). Soon that will be a bad example! Cars are quickly moving in this terrible direction. You used to be able to wrench them yourself, but every model year there is less and less serviceable by your friendly shade-tree mechanic. If the manufacturers are not stopped, we'll soon need to take our cars to the "Authori$ed Repair" centers or Dealer$hips to perform even basic maintenance.
- yurishimo 5y ago
  This is true, but also many cars, especially in the electric space, are extremely reliable apart from battery degradation and UV damage. Not saying you shouldn’t be able to get independent repairs, but more reliable cars mean less overall maintenance and I’m willing to pay slightly more at the less frequent service interval.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > This is true, but also many cars, especially in the electric space, are extremely reliable apart from battery degradation and UV damage. This is going to end soon, as EVs gain more traction. The end goal of value engineering in businesses under competitive pressure is to create a product that's as cheap to make as possible - meaning products evolve to be the worst possible garbage that still clears the "fit to function" bar. EVs don't break much because they're a new class of technologies. Companies will continue to "optimize" them by removing the amount and quality of materials going into their cars, until they start to break just as much as regular cars.
AussieWog93 5y ago
Fair point with the car example. I guess Microsoft could just suck it up and refuse to repair consoles under warranty if the user FUBARs them through bad repairs. They wouldn't be happy, but car people seem to be able to live with it.
- arghwhat 5y ago
  In the EU, home or third party repair of a car cannot itself void a warranty. Microsoft would have to diagnose the problem as being outside the warranty. On the other hand, if repair is easy for third parties, warranty becomes far less important.
  - yellowapple 5y ago
    > On the other hand, if repair is easy for third parties, warranty becomes far less important. Exactly. Not a single car I've owned has been under warranty, and that's been entirely fine by me, because I can always take it to a shop or take it to a mechanically-inclined friend or fix it myself. Likewise with desktops and laptops; there's been no need for a warranty if I can fix it myself, and until recently (what with the "let's make everything as pointlessly thin as possible" craze) that's almost always been the case.
nomel 5y ago
> Make opening their products accessible so that people can do it without damaging what they own. I think this misses the point that the problem is the unqualified tampering with the internals, not removing the case so you can access them.
- gchamonlive 5y ago
  Accessibility is not only about opening a case, but accessing things that require maintenance, like coolers. It seems unreasonable to me that manufacturers prevent users from even cleaning their devices without voiding warranty. On top of that, stickers are a lazy answer to the problem of damaging an equipment because of the so called unqualified tempering. An appropriate answer to that in my opinion would be to make parts cheap and available so that users can go to a third party workshop to have their systems cleaned, checked and repaired, so they don't have to do it themselves. This is why right to repair is also important.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    The point of Magnuson-Moss is that cleaning your device doesn’t void the warranty (assuming the warranty issue doesn’t arise from the cleaning). Removing a sticker that says “warranty void if sticker removed” doesn’t void your warranty.
  - nomel 5y ago
    My comment's context was the response to AussieWog93 original comment. I think his point is that unqualified tampering with the internals probably should void the warranty. A user is qualified to clean the cooler, and do other basic maintenance. A good example is when someone follows YouTube videos to mod their xbox with 1/4 inch wood burning tool rather than a soldering iron.
dint 5y ago
Further, provide documentation and support for, and sell spare parts to, users who want to fix their consoles (at least, in the case of procedures that a user could reasonably perform) I'm a home bicycle mechanic, and all manufacturers of bike components do this.
lordlimecat 5y ago
>you can have stickers that decay over time and void your warranty They claim it voids your warranty. It does not. This is an important distinction. Ask them for the warranty repair, if they refuse send a demand letter. If they blow you off take them to small claims court.

mycall 5y ago

The right to repair also means if you break it, you own both halves. It is the right to risk. If I want to run SteamOS on an Xbox, let me try at least. If I succeed, let me resell the modified form. Buyer Beware in the social network age. Don't make that illegal.

colechristensen 5y ago

>For any console that hasn't been tampered with Why shouldn't I be able to "tamper" with something that I own? If they weren't so hostile to modification and repair, the failure rate of people trying to do things themselves would go down quite a lot.

AussieWog93 5y ago
>Why shouldn't I be able to "tamper" with something that I own? Of course you should be able to. You shouldn't expect someone else to repair it for free when you botch up the job completely, though. >If they weren't so hostile to modification and repair, the failure rate of people trying to do things themselves would go down quite a lot. Having opened up consoles from the NES era right through the Xbone, I don't think it's fair to say they're hostile to repair. There is a good supply for just about every part that fails commonly in every console from the last 35 years. Anti-repair technology like serialization is limited to the parts that could be comandeered to enable "backups", and the systems themselves are fairly simple for a skilled person to navigate through. Ribbons will typically have clips at both ends (DS being the notable exception) and common "problem parts like" fans, laser modules and HDDs are always easy to remove and replace (with the exception of the laser/HDD in the OG Xbox). The newer consoles do use BGA and 4+ layer boards, but that's to be expected as it keeps the BOM cost and size down.
- guerrilla 5y ago
  > You shouldn't expect someone else to repair it for free Why are you repairing anything for free? This really sounds like a you problem. Stand up for yourself, charge reasonable rates and stop calling people idiots.
  - notriddle 5y ago
    Because you have a warranty contract to fulfill.
    - guerrilla 5y ago

guerrilla 5y ago

So? Charge more. It's none of yoir business. Also, don't call them idiots. They took a risk for a reason, which is entirely rational.

names_are_hard 5y ago
This. Your customers are not idiots, they're non-experts who chose to try to repair something on their own, possibly learning something in the process. Good for them! Sometimes they might succeed, sometimes they get stuck and bring it in to a professional. You are entitled to tell them, in a non-accusatory tone, that due to previous repair work that was attempted the job will take longer and you charge by the hour. That's the risk they accepted when trying to DIY and there's nothing wrong with that.

seer 5y ago

What you say is very valid - You get stuff you own and under warranty repaired for cheaper. But if that all is true, wouldn’t it be better if that list of problems/solutions were forced to be public? And people would be left to try, if they wanted to, to fix it themselves? I personally think Governments should encourage this kind of endeavors from their citizens as that fosters the kind of people who could become better innovators and ultimately benefitting all. Otherwise you benefit the company that produced it and maybe licensed repair shops. I know it’s supposed to benefit the consumer in the end for cheaper prices, but I have a feeling this is not what ends up happening and corporations and middle men eat those profits. If there is one thing cursory observation of global economics makes obvious, it is that states that have more entrepreneurs and innovators become the best to live in in the long term, and I would imagine they would attempt to craft their laws to encourage that.

AussieWog93 5y ago
>I personally think Governments should encourage this kind of endeavors from their citizens as that fosters the kind of people who could become better innovators and ultimately benefitting all. I definitely get where you're coming from. Personally, I got into electronics because my Nintendo DS broke and my parents wouldn't buy me a new one. I now have a EEE degree and a pair of businesses that I would have never been able to set up without the STEM knowledge that I was forced to learn to get emulators on my PSP etc. Publishing good repair guides would definitely be a positive step in the right direction that encourages more kids to do the same and actually succeed. The knowledge out there on Reddit, YouTube and forums is mostly incorrect, harmful and spread by people who don't actually perform the repairs themselves. iFixit is good but sparse, especially for older hardware. I've thought about uploading some videos to YouTube going over both the theory and practice of diagnosis/repair, but I doubt I'm the first person to come up with this idea despite not being able to find any of them. I suspect that the algorithm will favour content from creators with high production values, good presenting skills and a regular upload schedule over and above expertise in an extremely specific area of electronics repair.

ballenf 5y ago

Your example makes the opposite case: it seems trivially easy to see whether a failure is the result of user error (legitimately invalidating the warranty) or inherent defect/failure.