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This is either a badly written law or a very seller-friendly interpretation of it. Surely, if a hard drives breaks after 14 months of use, it is either the cons

by dchest 15y ago

This is either a badly written law or a very seller-friendly interpretation of it. Surely, if a hard drives breaks after 14 months of use, it is either the consumer's fault or a manufacturing defect. The fact the liability is on seller shouldn't change the interpretation of "breakage". At least in the Russian consumer protection law, you can go to the seller instead of the manufacturer if your computer breaks, and it's up to the seller what it does with it -- if you don't get it repaired in 45 days, the seller must pay you the full price or send a replacement. I would like to see someone trying to prove that there was a manufacturing defect causing a connection port to disconnect from the motherboard after 14 month And that's why in some countries the burden of such proof is on the seller.

jujjine 15y ago
Well I don't think the problem is about wether it's seller or customer friendly but how the cost is distributed between the customers. If the warranty is high, the additional support costs will added to the product price, such that the support penalty is effectively shared between the customers. On the other side, if the warranty period is short, the product price will be lower, but a small number of customers must pay a lot to repair their devices out of warranty. Then one needs to take into consideration that there are many ways to break a device by being "sloppy" but not fall outside warranty constrains. I try to be careful with the devices I own and in the first case I would have to pay for the carelessness of other people and I don't like that. On the other side high repair cost can be a large burden to single individuals, which is when it is reasonable to share risks in the community (see, e.g., medical costs). This is why I guess the European law is basically about getting a working device in the first place and not about how repair costs are being distributed, which is non-obvious to decide.

by dchest 15y ago

jujjine 15y ago

Well I don't think the problem is about wether it's seller or customer friendly but how the cost is distributed between the customers. If the warranty is high, the additional support costs will added to the product price, such that the support penalty is effectively shared between the customers. On the other side, if the warranty period is short, the product price will be lower, but a small number of customers must pay a lot to repair their devices out of warranty. Then one needs to take into consideration that there are many ways to break a device by being "sloppy" but not fall outside warranty constrains. I try to be careful with the devices I own and in the first case I would have to pay for the carelessness of other people and I don't like that. On the other side high repair cost can be a large burden to single individuals, which is when it is reasonable to share risks in the community (see, e.g., medical costs). This is why I guess the European law is basically about getting a working device in the first place and not about how repair costs are being distributed, which is non-obvious to decide.