14 ms·

Right to Repair: The Price Is Not Right

172 points by acqbu 3y ago

kazinator 3y ago
> But these requirements still ignore one of the biggest problems: the price of spare parts. No, that is short-sighted. The price of spare parts is the symptom. The root cause is that the part are highly specific to whatever they are going into, and there is a single supplier for them. For repairs to be easy, things have to be made with generic parts that are available from multiple suppliers. Not all parts have to be that way, just the ones likely to break, or ones that are expected to require replacement by design. You're not going to get decent prices for spare parts, if you're vendor-locked, and there is no competition.
- ikesau 3y ago
  yeah, this logic makes sense to me i just have no idea how you begin to create a global system of "generic parts" beyond screws and bolts in a world of globalized supply chains, with specialized production in every country. but i also have no experience in manufacturing or repair. i'd love to hear if there are any successful case studies on the subject
  - jfim 3y ago
    There are definitely some products for which it would be doable, for example Midea makes a lot of the microwave oven models sold in the US.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > i just have no idea how you begin to create a global system of "generic parts" beyond screws and bolts in a world of globalized supply chains, with specialized production in every country. Older cars were. Manufacturers never designed their own brake pads, they picked a caliper design that closely fit an existing wheel. Carburetors? Just fit one from a carburetor manufacturer (weber, etc). Steering racks, balljoints ... many fit multiple brands. Alternators, radiators, various water tanks ... all from a common parts manufacturer, then used in several brands. Thermostats used to be a common design too. Hell, they don't even do their own transmissions - just get a ZF-whatever. When Hyundai launched their gen-1 Elantra ~1990, it came with a Mitsubishi engine. Wheel bearings, CV joints - one design fit many different brands. The repairability of older cars was amazing in retrospect. Today it's different - you are unlikely to find brake pads from a Ford that fits a Toyota. The companies spent extra money on design, to make that internal part significantly different, then extra money on tooling to actually build it, just so that you cannot buy a replacement unless its from them.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
      > just so that you cannot buy a replacement Conspiracy theories aside, the reason is more likely that by designing the part themselves, for a common set of applications at that manufacturer the cost is far lower than designing the rest of the car around the part. IOW: I have 1 cubic foot available for an assembly. I can custom design an assembly for the best performance I can get in that space, or I can redesign the engine compartment to get more than 1 ft^3 of space to fit the off the shelf part into.
      - petsfed 3y ago
        My experience is that, because of concerns around single-point supply chain failures, most good design operations try to use off-the-shelf components as much as possible, and only custom manufacture that which cannot be purchased externally and still achieve the desired performance. Fitment is one of the factors, but fitment is itself dictated by a lot of things (aesthetics, ergonomics, safety standards, etc etc) that factor into the overall design. One could argue that Lamborghini could just drop a Ford Triton V10 into the Huracan and call it a day (it would save tens of thousands of dollars per car), but would that allow the rest of the car to still look like it does? Perform like it does? Enshrining right-to-repair into law is, in my opinion, a pretty good way to make sure that field-repairability is factored into the design. But I don't think its productive to force manufacturers to use a particular design technique to achieve that requirement. That hobbles their ability to actually deliver on their design.
        lelanthran 3y ago
        > One could argue that Lamborghini could just drop a Ford Triton V10 into the Huracan and call it a day (it would save tens of thousands of dollars per car), but would that allow the rest of the car to still look like it does? Perform like it does? Well, they did drop an Audi engine in one of their cars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini_Urus#Powertrain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini_Urus#Powertrain
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      But I can trivially easily buy replacement brake pads from any number of manufacturers. Even for a Lexus LFA (limited production supercar), I can buy pads from Bendix, FVP, Proline, and Wagner [and that's just what RockAuto carries]. For a more pedestrian 2020 Camry Hybrid, I have my choice of 57 different offerings from 13 different brands (covering both front and rear axles). > The companies spent extra money on design, to make that internal part significantly different, then extra money on tooling to actually build it, just so that you cannot buy a replacement unless its from them. Note that none of those were branded as Toyota/Lexus original parts, nor sold by them. If they did all that design work in order to capture spare parts sales, they forgot to do the second part of that strategy.
  - MilStdJunkie 3y ago
    With international supply chains, labor hours naturally flowed down to those places with cheapest labor, while maintenance hours (performed in higher standard of living countries) were chopped to basically nothing. Maintenance is where standards get enforced. While it might be possible to dictate standards to a factory in Shenzhen, the odds they're going to be built to spec is vanishingly small. So, as we've seen, far easier to just have the overseas factory build the assembly, then you can reject the nonfunctional assembly, or, better yet, have the consumer find the nonfunctional units directly. The upside of this is you can make all the components completely bespoke to the application, tightening tolerances and (with the potential of) increasing overall reliability. In industries where maintenance still has to happen, you see these general specs still in use. ARINC is one set that I deal with every day - they publish tons - along with many various MIL-STD things.
  - antisthenes 3y ago
    > i just have no idea how you begin to create a global system of "generic parts" beyond screws and bolts in a world of globalized supply chains, with specialized production in every country. As the article points out, sometimes the spare parts are extremely simple things like bolts and screws, which should really be standardized across all industries. Things like motors/switches and other simple electric components can also be (and should be) mostly standardized. It's only once you get to circuits and complex electronic boards that you will run into issues, because they can be custom. Most consumer products aren't complicated, and if they are, they are only complicated because the company is trying to create huge markups and prevent people from repairing items.
- ErikRogneby 3y ago
  Exactly right! there are a whole lot of after-market part suppliers for major appliances like dishwashers, laundry washing machines etc. Some of them have a parts list and assembly schematic hidden in the machine.
  - userbinator 3y ago
    Many washing machines are produced by the Whirlpool group under different brands, so it's not surprising that they would have a lot of parts in common and thus also feed a large aftermarket. Import brands like Samsung and LG tend to be much worse on parts availability and service information (and according to some statistics, also reliability.)
- ghaff 3y ago
  There are often third-party spare parts. Some of the plastic parts on my decades old Cuisinart food processor have started to go but the motor is still great. But Cuisinart doesn't make the parts for what is almost a 50 year old appliance at this point. I was able to buy 3rd party parts for too much money but they don't fit quite right. I make do as it's not something I use that often and can make it work.
- cmiller1 3y ago
  > things have to be made with generic parts This seems tricky to legislate though. How do regulators decide which parts are like this? How do you deal with "generic parts" holding back innovation in cases where someone has invented an improved version of that part but it's not available as a generic part yet?
  - isilofi 3y ago
    There are standards for sizes of screws, washers, motors, cables, plugs, sockets, ... Just create a bunch more of those standards, e.g. for batteries, legislate their use, done. As a side effect, products become cheaper because parts will then be available off-the-shelf at economy-of-scale prices, and supply problems also become less likely because there will be numerous vendors for each part. However, there will be two problems: some things, like cases and special moldings are hard to standardize. So I would suggest legislating that 3D-printing instructions (STL, material, finishing steps) be made available as soon as the part itself is unavailable or too expensive. And very innovative parts should be exempt for the first few years, provided they are measurably and provably better than the standardized equivalents and that a new standard is being created from them.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      > There are standards for sizes of screws, washers, motors, cables, plugs, sockets, ... Looking at my iFixit screwdriver bit set for electronics, which sports some 60+ bits and still doesn't cover everything I happen upon, I'm thinking the standards are being less than helpful here. I mean, it's good to have them, but it would be better to have way fewer equivalent options.
      - isilofi 3y ago
        Most of those are not standardized according to any proper standard. They are intentionally obfuscated to make access and repairs difficult.
  - Aerbil313 3y ago
    It’s the tension between technological progress and societal inertia at its fundamentals. Exact same argument can be applied to many areas including software. You can’t solve it. It’ll be solved when technological progress stops.
- h0l0cube 3y ago
  Literally a whole section of TFA is devoted to this: > Astute readers may have noticed one typical element missing from the price setting factors listed above: competitiveness.
  - kazinator 3y ago
    It's hard for astute readers to read that far into something that is constantly telling them what they already know.
- Rygian 3y ago
  The rule should be that the total cumulative cost of all the spare parts for an appliance must be lower than 80% of the price of the appliance brand new.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    The price of all the spare parts to build an assembly will always be higher than the finished product, absent some crazy imbalance of very high labor and very low parts costs. (Arguably, a block of wood that you can whittle a product out of would sell for less than the finished product, but anything mass-produced will have spare parts priced at some small multiple of the finished good price.) Why? It's incredibly labor-intensive and logistics-intensive to track and offer one M10x1.25x12mm bolt or one main PCB for a $30 product. When I'm mass producing 5K units, I need 5K PCBs, 15K bolts, 5K upper case halves, 5K lower case halves, 5K displays, 5K buttons, etc. and I can arrange to have them delivered lineside in kits or whatever form I need and I'm pretty much going to use up everything I order in a very predictable way. When you need 1 display and 2 bolts, I have no guarantee that I can sell all the spare parts I made and stocked, and each little fiddly item I have to have someone inventory, put away, fetch, box, pack, and ship to you. It's going to cost more or you're not going to get it. (Today, you mostly can't get it.)
  - petsfed 3y ago
    This only works if you can only get like half of the assembly in spares. Otherwise, all I have to do to undercut the literal manufacturer is find cheaper labor to assemble the final product. I like capping the cost of the replacement parts, but you have to factor in the additional labor cost of individually packaging, inventorying, storing, and shipping pieces that are going to go to final assembly either as a kit, or bulked in such a way that a spare-parts shipper cannot just part them out efficiently. So the total cost, before shipping and tax, of a stack of replacement parts to fully rebuild widget X should cost more than the fully assembled thing, but should probably cost less than 2 or 3 widget Xs.
  - refurb 3y ago
    The cost of a given part could change over time.
Dalewyn 3y ago
If Right to Repair was about the Right to Save Money rather than guaranteeing basic consumer rights, the advocates should have specified as such. I have no sympathy for misrepresented idealogies, let alone ones driven by greed (in this case consumer greed). Y'all got your Right to Repair guaranteed, nowhere did it stipulate that had to be below <X> cost.
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  Yeah but I don’t think it’s reasonable for replacement parts to cost nearly as much as a new device unless those parts do make up a substantial of the manufacture cost. Making repair more expensive than buying new defeats the purpose of repair.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    The purpose of repair is to reduce waste and guarantee a consumer's right to do with his things as he pleases. Saving some money by repairing is certainly nice, but that is a side effect and not the primary objective.
    - kayodelycaon 3y ago
      I think my point was having the repair being more expensive than new would defeat the goal of reducing waste.
      - Dalewyn 3y ago
        What? Why would an expensive repair "defeat the goal" of reducing waste? I am repairing it, there is no waste produced.
  - trealira 3y ago
    It can also just be for preservation purposes. A lot of old game consoles are dying, and so are CRT televisions (which just aren't manufactured anymore). Enthusiasts would want both of these to be repairable so that old games can be played forever (but AFAIK, only CRTs are actually repairable). The supply of both of them are shrinking, so only repairability would help their longevity. I guess that also ties into how long the guarantee of repairability should last. Nothing lasts forever; at some point, the parts to make the technology may stop being manufactured and sold.
andrewla 3y ago
Holy unintended side effects, Batman! I have to say that I did not see this coming when I heard about right-to-repair legislation. It seems like there is one workaround for a reseller; I can just buy Bosch washing machines new, and disassemble them for parts. In the worst case, the most commonly failing part will cost as much as one washing machine. Plus the cost of carrying inventory. Or I guess you could try to do it on-demand, but you've still got a bunch of motor-less washing machines in the shed out back.
- jjbickerstaffe 3y ago
  For many products there seems to be a thriving ecosystem on ebay of people taking genuine manufacturer parts, subdividing them, and reselling the smaller individual parts for consumers to use.
kayodelycaon 3y ago
Part of the problem here is we don’t know the margins of this stuff. Just how badly are we being screwed? Probably pretty bad but… Manufacturing cost for a non-OEM part is not representative of total cost to an OEM to provide quality-assured and warrantied spares of said part to customers. Some parts are stored as complete assemblies. A unique screw may not be stocked as a separate item. It’s possible replacing a damaged or missing subassembly puts the whole thing out of tolerances. The majority of these arguments are probably complete bullshit. Repairability is the cost of doing business. This is going to be a pain to enforce. Hopefully enough companies get painful penalties to deter the rest from playing this game.
- roywashere 3y ago
  And as the article stated: it can differ from vendor to vendor. I used to own an 8 year old Honda Civic and spare parts were difficult to obtain and expensive. Later I owned a 30+ year old Mercedes and parts were relatively cheap and easy to obtain and shipped locally next business day. With electronics it sucks a little that it seems for almost all brands everything is expensive and difficult. It does not really help that many electronics (such as the mentioned grass trimmers) are so extremely cheap to begin with.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    > 8 year old Honda Civic and spare parts were difficult to obtain and expensive What parts did you find difficult or expensive? We've owned a 2005 CR-V (a jacked-up AWD Civic, basically) and I've had no problems or complaints with the few items I've needed to source. RockAuto almost always gets them to me the next day or 2 days in the worst common case. (I agree that parts availability for Mercedes is also good, but I'm a little surprised to hear of parts issues [other than perhaps interior plastic panels] on a Honda Civic.)
Dnguyen 3y ago
I try to repair as much as I can because I don't want stuff end up in the trash. If the parts are expensive, we need a way to source the parts from the non-fully functional units out there. From my experience, most people find the repair a daunting task and won't even think about it.
MostlyStable 3y ago
I know that relative to the size of the whole market, the number of consumers interested enough in repairing their stuff to consider it when purchasing is small, but does anyone know of any places that actually include both ease of repair and availability of parts in their review system? iFixit it does it for a small subset of electronics, but I'd love to be able to find the equivalent for things like power tools, kitchen tools, appliances, etc. Does Consumer Reports check this? I know they do reliability, but do they include repair? I think I'd be willing to pay if there was a reputable place I could check. Especially if it was possible to see if there are particular brands that are generally good about this (which might help decide in the case that a specific product isn't yet assessed).
- trealira 3y ago
  The article mentions the the French indice de réparabilité, but it's not perfect (and you need to speak French). > For some products, the French indice de réparabilité can help you take this into account, in order to choose a washing machine that scores 10/10 for spare parts price instead of one that scores 2,5/10, or a TV that scores 7,5/10 instead of one that scores 0/10.(7) However, you cannot search for or filter products by spare parts score on any website. You have to check them one by one by reviewing the scoring grid, which may not even be available online—although the seller is legally required to provide it upon request. This is the website: https://www.indicereparabilite.fr/ https://www.indicereparabilite.fr/
  - AshamedCaptain 3y ago
    Ah yes, the repair score. Where something practically disposable like a Samsung foldable device (where you just can't do anything without destroying the main screen) scores a whopping 8/10 ( https://cdn.woopic.com/c10f167280f2414abb346a5347e1ecd9/prod/binaries/files/958357_27947390_1_samsung_galaxy_zfold5_calcul_indice_de_reparabilite.pdf https://cdn.woopic.com/c10f167280f2414abb346a5347e1ecd9/prod... ) , while something like the Fairphone scores just one extra point at 9/10. For comparison, iFixit gave the Fold a 2/10, and the Fairphone a 10/10.
    - 3y ago
psynister 3y ago
I ran into this same thing recently. My dryer needed new electronics, basically the same price as buying a new dryer. My wife had strong opinions about JUST buying a new dryer so guess who has a new washer AND dryer?
- nobodyandproud 3y ago
  One could say that the choice of buying over repairing was a wash.
MostlyStable 3y ago
My personal experience with this was with a blender. The mount that held the motor went bad (turns out it was due to incredibly spindly supports that had broken. It probably saved a few cents in material costs but resulted in the whole thing failing years earlier than it probably should have), but luckily, the mounting bracket was available, and at an eminently reasonable price. Unfortunately, during this process, the mounting bracket holding the control board in place also broke (they did not use very high quality plastic), and unfortunately that piece was only sold as an assembly with the entire control board which was priced basically identically to the whole blender. It's currently sitting in a cupboard waiting for me to get the energy to get a 3d printed replacement, since I am having trouble throwing away what is otherwise a perfectly serviceable blender except for 1 small broken piece of plastic. Unfortunately, this particular problem is not one that I think can be legislated away (or at least not without the legistlation causing more problems than it fixes). The only way it gets fixed is if consumers start to care and start basing their purchases at least partially on repairability (including price). And that kind of culture shift is hard.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  > The only way it gets fixed is if consumers start to care and start basing their purchases at least partially on repairability (including price). And that kind of culture shift is hard. It is not technically hard. Just hit new goods with a sufficient tax such that buyers have no choice but to start caring about longevity and repairability. Of course, it is practically impossible since people like being able to buy more stuff.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigouvian_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigouvian_tax The political problems section is what to read, in general, no one is going to vote this on themselves.
    - n2d4 3y ago
      Right to repair wouldn't be a pigouvian tax. There are no negative externalities to selling a product that is unrepairable — no one but the buyer gets harmed by it — it's just that people buy products before sufficiently informing themselves about what to do when they break. Instead, a pigouvian tax would be on something like, say, me offering you to punch an uninvolved third-party that you don't like in exchange for money. I may be happy because I made money, and you may be happy because you wanted to see someone punch said third-party, but overall it would still be negative sum because the third-party would obviously not be happier. So one way to fix that is by taxing it. (A less extreme example is environmental pollution.) Taxing unrepairable products would be much more like taxing addictive drugs that pose no danger to other people, where the legislation protects people from their own bad decisions.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mytailorisrich 3y ago
This was expected and foreseen. Devices and appliances are manufactured with huge economies of scale and are, all in all, cheap. Spare parts are going to cost and, especially, professional labour is going to cost. It's never going to make much financial sense to repair cheap-ish devices.
- pixl97 3y ago
  Yep, typically all the parts are made in bulk as in... Company: Build me 1 million washing machines. Of course this is 1 million barrels, controller boards, frames, etc. The people building the parts are going to build in a little bit of overrun to deal with warranty and factory damage, but there simply isn't enough extra stock laying around to keep them running for decades.
- Crosseye_Jack 3y ago
  Depends on the device/appliance imo. I've repaired my washer and dryer a couple of times (a pump failed on both, had to strip and clean the washer once after someone used it to clean a old teddy bear and didn't put it in a wash bag(the bear came apart)), the part was manufactured by a number of companies (prob the same OEM suppliers, just without the brand stamped into it) and was pretty quick to replace the part myself. A couple of years ago my parents dryer packed up (heating element died), I went down to double check the issue, ordered the part (off Amazon of all places, was more expense then some other places, but next day delivery!) and swapped the part the next day (Took the lid off, which gave access to the screws for the front panel, popped that off, unscrewed and disconnected the old heater, reversed the process to put it back together, jobs done!). Rang my step bother to tell him it was fixed and he was in the process of buying them new dryer. When it comes to most appliances, "professional" labour isn't required, just someone handy with a screwdriver and can follow along to a YouTube video. The thing I've come across with real life friends is that they either just need a small nudge to do it themselves or they value their time more than the cost of hiring someone / buying a new one. (though, me personally, I wouldn't touch gas with a 10 ft pole!) EDIT: Also repaired a far few TV's for friends & family too, but I also have a decent soldering setup which I don't expect "normies" to have, Always fun when you can fix someones "broken" TV with a few pennies worth of capacitors because its just a bad power supply!
boatsie 3y ago
Another issue with this is that the part that fails often is poorly designed or not durable in the first place. So you spend money and time to replace it and then it will just fail again. Zero incentive to improve the part by the manufacturer. I think the solution is requiring manufacturers to sell warranties that cover full labor and materials or replacement. Then at least you could see if a manufacturer selling something cheaply has a very high “full warranty” price, it’s likely because it has a high failure rate. This would be the only way to incentivize fewer failures and repairs.
- Rygian 3y ago
  2-year seller warranty is already a legal obligation in the EU.
  - verve_rat 3y ago
    But 2 years isn't long enough. A washing machine or an oven should last at least a decade. I'd like to see a legally mandated warranty system where a new appliance should last 5 years with no repairs, and 20 years with repairs that total no more than 25% of the original purchase price.
    - system2 3y ago
      Luckily, washing and laundry machines are easy to repair with generic replacement parts. My LG washer had an issue with water valve selenoids, I replaced them for under $35 (the repair man asked $300). Also, my Whirlpool washer had an issue with basket rails. $9 fix from amazon. The bigger concern is probably smaller electronics as plastic parts are easily replaced and found on marketplaces.
      - rssoconnor 3y ago
        Today I had my hose replaced in my portable dishwasher (costing me half the price of the dishwasher for parts and labour). I watched the whole processes, and while it isn't all that complicated, I'm left skeptical that I could have successfully performed the repair myself. In particular I don't have the fancy crimping tool (probably the wrong name for it) that the repair person had. I didn't have the inflatable little pillow thing that helped cushion the tipped over dishwasher. I didn't know which screws to unscrew to remove the top and panelling. I didn't know the top slides backwards to remove. I'm not sure what the lubricant he used when slipping on the drain hose. At one point there was a cable tie that I probably would have cut, but now I understand it was tying down a different hose than the ones being removed. Even the repair person had trouble assembling lining up the two screws in the back with the frame (again using the little inflatable pillow to help lift the machine just a little bit). Assuming I could even complete it, it probably would have taken me at least 4.5 hours instead of 1.5 hours. Probably more. I don't know. It's a bit weird since I'm pretty comfortable opening my tower PC, and replacing the hard drive or installing a new heat sink. I even opened up my mom's doorbell and managed to fix the micro-switch inside (cracking it a little bit in the process), which I'm a bit proud of. So it's not like I'm entirely inept.
sparker72678 3y ago
Just about every proposed regulation in this article would dramatically increase the selling price of nearly all goods, and dramatically hinder new entrants from selling new products by increasing the burden to get started. If that's the set of tradeoffs you want to make, ok, fine. But be up-front about it. Consumer goods, by and large, are not markets with massive profit margins. They're markets of incredible scale with slim margins that generate large revenue as a result. You're not going to get better, more repairable products out of this. You're going to get fewer, more expensive products.
- WWLink 3y ago
  > dramatically hinder new entrants from selling new products Armchair product engineering thoughts: A lot of kickstarters seemed to set themselves up for failure by trying to make a hermetically sealed apple-style product and have it produced in china without ever considering if they could build it locally, if they could get it produced in smaller quantities - if at all.... I get the whole "it can't be made at a competitive price if you don't build for an economy of scale" - but what seemed to happen is a startup would attempt to sell a widget with a design that was all hopes and dreams, immediately fly out to china, and spend a whole bunch of time and money coming up with something that looked great on paper.... but then had a fundamental flaw that required them to throw away all of the initial batch of products - maybe even the first few batches, burning up every penny they gathered in their funding campaign. "Hold on there cowboy" is my take on this - it's easy to throw a design together that looks slick and ends up quickly becoming ewaste... startups (and startup-like projects) are usually some of the worst offenders. Think of things like Ouya or (lol) Google Stadia or any of a plethora of IoT crap that sounded cool, didn't quite achieve the desired results, and ended up in the landfill. I'd argue that all this "bureaucratic red-tape" would help limit how much ewaste gets produced, at least a little bit.
  - jkestner 3y ago
    I’ve made a conscious effort to build our (Kickstarted!) stuff domestically. With the exception of one product in China, which was still an educational PITA. Can’t claim the things are Made in America when a critical component is fabbed overseas, but it’s great to talk with people in my time zone. Going to be even better to drive over to the injection molder to dial in fit and finish. OTOH, the examples you cite and many more are junked not because they’re made in China but due to a lack of software support/remediation. I’m not sure if there’s a business model that incentivizes this, so I’m rooting for the regulations that are slowing coming along on this.
deviantbit 3y ago
I've experienced overpriced parts. I've also experienced the inability to acquire parts. I was able to completely rebuild my Dyson vacuum cleaner, with Dyson parts for a fraction of a new one. My A/C had a control board that went out, and only an authorized dealer could sell a replacement. The catch was, the dealer had to install it. So, since I have the skills, so I thought, I pulled the board, and went to repair it myself. They wanted to charge $1100, when the bad part was $7 dollars including shipping. But guess what, they have a battery backed latching relay to detect if the boards are disconnected. Those MFr's. I replaced the entire system after this fiasco. There is an Asian company that made fighter planes that escorted bombers to Pearl Harbor, that now make HVAC systems. I would avoid them. Making your products proprietary is one thing, but intentionally engineering them this way is criminal.
- petsfed 3y ago
  That fits in the same zone as DRM for printer cartridges or coffee flavor cups. That's asshole design. I absolutely understand the urge to validate the inputs to make sure the thing will keep working, but leveraging that as a competitive moat is just adversarial to customers.
- Nick87633 3y ago
  Is that Mitsubishi? I would be curious to know how the anti-tamper relay setup was engineered. It would be great to have a hacker's guide on how to disable it!
merinofg 3y ago
My father owns an electronic repair shop specialized in TV, cameras and Music devices. The company has official agreements with the big brands to offer official technical support for their products, meaning that they have internal access to repair manuals and repair pieces to order from the official brand. Having a spare part more expensive than the product is a usual tactic from the manufacturer to not comply with the current EU law of producing and having stock of that piece for a minimum amount of years. The 99% of the customers that are notified of the price of the piece, drop the idea of repairing it as is cheaper to have a new one. The funny part is that some customers still decides to repair them, and if you try to call the manufacturer to order the repair piece, either they delay months the shipment, or they end up sending the full original product from some old stock as replacement to give to the customer (or to disassemble in the repair shop if the customer still wants his one). If current laws are, how to say this, "creatively (but legally) avoided" by companies, I really doubt that new regulations will help at all.
- spaceribs 3y ago
  It's just a matter of closing the loopholes then? I see law/regulation as a lot like releasing software, you need to iterate towards an ideal. Expecting an MVP to be perfect right out of the gate seems counterintuitive.
  - ygjb 3y ago
    Not just closing the loopholes; specifically imposing consumer awardable penalties for failing to support a product - something like treble damages for willful infringement should do the trick. Can't provide a part within a specific time frame at maximum cost of the appropriate fraction of the price, for a defined period of time after the product is sold? Great, the consumer is awarded an amount equal to 3 times the MSRP at product release to ensure they can acquire a replacement product!
- TylerE 3y ago
  How long should a manufacturer being required to provide parts support? Building tons of parts and then warehousing them for decades has a very real cost.
fdgh5 3y ago
Stop regulating the market. You are killing them, not helping.
- isilofi 3y ago
  Some parts of the market need to be killed, and quickly. Wasteful economy is killing the planet, and we need to dial down the produce-buy-throwaway-buy cycle.
  - fdgh5 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - isilofi 3y ago
      What an incredibly elaborate argument.
iteratethis 3y ago
An additional problem is companies simply going out of business. Happens a lot in the middle-segment of electronics. It's an unstoppable rat-race of cheap crappy products. The issue is that (too) cheap is the problem but also widely loved. I would love to pay more for long-lasting products that are repairable and well-recyclable but most people don't.
fn-mote 3y ago
The article (and comments) don't seem to make what I think are essential points. * Free-market competition is essential for price-setting. Aftermarket parts must be allowable. IMO no solution will ever work if the prices are set by a single vendor. People get mad, but * "Parts pairing" and DRM are a real problem. They prevent the establishment of a market for replacement parts. I would like to see a discussion of banning this practice. * Patents preventing the manufacture of "clone" replacement parts is another issue, but even that takes a back seat to software lock (or hardware lock, as a comment below mentions [1]). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39096846 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39096846 > [...] they have a battery backed latching relay to detect if the boards are disconnected [...]
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nobodyandproud 3y ago
As long as businesses can pass along the cost of disposal to customers or elsewhere, they have every incentive to fight repairs. Maybe forcing buy-back of broken products at a significant fraction of the original price? Though that'd incentivize "home appliances as a service" or fly-by-night businesses.
steve76 3y ago
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bigbabybuckman 3y ago
I'll scream into the void on this one. I loved my Pixel 5, it was the best phone I'd ever had. Pulling down with the fingerprint sensor in the back was a revelation. I fixit wants 200+CAD to send me a replacement screen. I have been desperate for these to go on sale for a while. It was a hard choice but the pixel 7 I have now, with carrier discounting, will in total cost me 70CAD.
thomasreggi 3y ago
Is there any DIY / 3D Printed community-made projects around designing household appliances? I'm mainly thinking about vacuums but even blenders and other things. Im not talking about everything being hand-made but designs can be made with popular motors, blades, and things of that nature. I like the idea of an off-the-shelf vacuum using the most efficient or readily available motors, and bags.
up2isomorphism 3y ago
Years of observation tells me that this is not a industry issue rather than consumer issue - We have failed to equip normal people with adequate sense of understanding/appreciation of non-straightforward things. With more and more customers not even wanting to read a user manual, businesses that give customer option to repair, in general, does not survive. Take X230 as an example, I spent $6xx in 2012 to buy it, equiped with 128GB ssd and 4GB memory and I spend around 300$ to upgrade it 1TB SSD/16GB Ram, plus something like $200 over the years for various things like fans, batteries. Even in 2021 I am not feeling it is slow, while I have probably made $1.5M worth of software work with that thing. BTW, none of these repair or upgrades is difficult in any sense. Do I want to buy something like again if it exists, surely I will. But do majority of people care? No. And during 10 years span, an average Apple user likely spent over 10K on laptops, while lenovo gets $600. I just do not know how such business can continue.
- DoItToMe81 3y ago
  Yeah, no. The industry intentionally making repairs impossible or excessively costly is absolutely an industry problem. Apple is especially responsible for this. Replacing parts on various iPhones will disable a whole slew of features depending on the part and model, which has nothing at all to do with "consumers not wanting to repair"
jacknews 3y ago
The right to repair laws should extend to modularity and standard interfaces. I'm not a great fan of legislation, but sometimes it's the only way to align for-profit enterprise's self interest with the common good. An example is the connection between a blender base and the jar. The manufacturers should be required to declare, and provide documentation for, the standard it adheres to, which would of course be available for 3rd parties to manufacture to. Ideally manufacturers would converge on a single, or a few shared standards, and I'm sure there are legislative ways to nudge them towards that, and discourage the natural tendency toward fragmentation, proprietary differentiation, etc, aka monopoly power. The PC world is a stunning example of the power of standard interfaces between components, and USB is a great example of where government can step in to the process; the EU usb-phone-charger mandate immediately solved, or at least vastly improved, the wasteful, expensive and inconvenient cacophony of proprietary phone chargers for consumers.
netfortius 3y ago
Is[n't] the choice of language menu also supposed to work on the actual linked article? I think it needs a little repair...

172 points by acqbu 3y ago

> But these requirements still ignore one of the biggest problems: the price of spare parts. No, that is short-sighted. The price of spare parts is the symptom. The root cause is that the part are highly specific to whatever they are going into, and there is a single supplier for them. For repairs to be easy, things have to be made with generic parts that are available from multiple suppliers. Not all parts have to be that way, just the ones likely to break, or ones that are expected to require replacement by design. You're not going to get decent prices for spare parts, if you're vendor-locked, and there is no competition.

ikesau 3y ago
yeah, this logic makes sense to me i just have no idea how you begin to create a global system of "generic parts" beyond screws and bolts in a world of globalized supply chains, with specialized production in every country. but i also have no experience in manufacturing or repair. i'd love to hear if there are any successful case studies on the subject
- jfim 3y ago
  There are definitely some products for which it would be doable, for example Midea makes a lot of the microwave oven models sold in the US.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > i just have no idea how you begin to create a global system of "generic parts" beyond screws and bolts in a world of globalized supply chains, with specialized production in every country. Older cars were. Manufacturers never designed their own brake pads, they picked a caliper design that closely fit an existing wheel. Carburetors? Just fit one from a carburetor manufacturer (weber, etc). Steering racks, balljoints ... many fit multiple brands. Alternators, radiators, various water tanks ... all from a common parts manufacturer, then used in several brands. Thermostats used to be a common design too. Hell, they don't even do their own transmissions - just get a ZF-whatever. When Hyundai launched their gen-1 Elantra ~1990, it came with a Mitsubishi engine. Wheel bearings, CV joints - one design fit many different brands. The repairability of older cars was amazing in retrospect. Today it's different - you are unlikely to find brake pads from a Ford that fits a Toyota. The companies spent extra money on design, to make that internal part significantly different, then extra money on tooling to actually build it, just so that you cannot buy a replacement unless its from them.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
    > just so that you cannot buy a replacement Conspiracy theories aside, the reason is more likely that by designing the part themselves, for a common set of applications at that manufacturer the cost is far lower than designing the rest of the car around the part. IOW: I have 1 cubic foot available for an assembly. I can custom design an assembly for the best performance I can get in that space, or I can redesign the engine compartment to get more than 1 ft^3 of space to fit the off the shelf part into.
    - petsfed 3y ago
      My experience is that, because of concerns around single-point supply chain failures, most good design operations try to use off-the-shelf components as much as possible, and only custom manufacture that which cannot be purchased externally and still achieve the desired performance. Fitment is one of the factors, but fitment is itself dictated by a lot of things (aesthetics, ergonomics, safety standards, etc etc) that factor into the overall design. One could argue that Lamborghini could just drop a Ford Triton V10 into the Huracan and call it a day (it would save tens of thousands of dollars per car), but would that allow the rest of the car to still look like it does? Perform like it does? Enshrining right-to-repair into law is, in my opinion, a pretty good way to make sure that field-repairability is factored into the design. But I don't think its productive to force manufacturers to use a particular design technique to achieve that requirement. That hobbles their ability to actually deliver on their design.
      - lelanthran 3y ago
        > One could argue that Lamborghini could just drop a Ford Triton V10 into the Huracan and call it a day (it would save tens of thousands of dollars per car), but would that allow the rest of the car to still look like it does? Perform like it does? Well, they did drop an Audi engine in one of their cars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini_Urus#Powertrain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini_Urus#Powertrain
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    But I can trivially easily buy replacement brake pads from any number of manufacturers. Even for a Lexus LFA (limited production supercar), I can buy pads from Bendix, FVP, Proline, and Wagner [and that's just what RockAuto carries]. For a more pedestrian 2020 Camry Hybrid, I have my choice of 57 different offerings from 13 different brands (covering both front and rear axles). > The companies spent extra money on design, to make that internal part significantly different, then extra money on tooling to actually build it, just so that you cannot buy a replacement unless its from them. Note that none of those were branded as Toyota/Lexus original parts, nor sold by them. If they did all that design work in order to capture spare parts sales, they forgot to do the second part of that strategy.
- MilStdJunkie 3y ago
  With international supply chains, labor hours naturally flowed down to those places with cheapest labor, while maintenance hours (performed in higher standard of living countries) were chopped to basically nothing. Maintenance is where standards get enforced. While it might be possible to dictate standards to a factory in Shenzhen, the odds they're going to be built to spec is vanishingly small. So, as we've seen, far easier to just have the overseas factory build the assembly, then you can reject the nonfunctional assembly, or, better yet, have the consumer find the nonfunctional units directly. The upside of this is you can make all the components completely bespoke to the application, tightening tolerances and (with the potential of) increasing overall reliability. In industries where maintenance still has to happen, you see these general specs still in use. ARINC is one set that I deal with every day - they publish tons - along with many various MIL-STD things.
- antisthenes 3y ago
  > i just have no idea how you begin to create a global system of "generic parts" beyond screws and bolts in a world of globalized supply chains, with specialized production in every country. As the article points out, sometimes the spare parts are extremely simple things like bolts and screws, which should really be standardized across all industries. Things like motors/switches and other simple electric components can also be (and should be) mostly standardized. It's only once you get to circuits and complex electronic boards that you will run into issues, because they can be custom. Most consumer products aren't complicated, and if they are, they are only complicated because the company is trying to create huge markups and prevent people from repairing items.
ErikRogneby 3y ago
Exactly right! there are a whole lot of after-market part suppliers for major appliances like dishwashers, laundry washing machines etc. Some of them have a parts list and assembly schematic hidden in the machine.
- userbinator 3y ago
  Many washing machines are produced by the Whirlpool group under different brands, so it's not surprising that they would have a lot of parts in common and thus also feed a large aftermarket. Import brands like Samsung and LG tend to be much worse on parts availability and service information (and according to some statistics, also reliability.)
ghaff 3y ago
There are often third-party spare parts. Some of the plastic parts on my decades old Cuisinart food processor have started to go but the motor is still great. But Cuisinart doesn't make the parts for what is almost a 50 year old appliance at this point. I was able to buy 3rd party parts for too much money but they don't fit quite right. I make do as it's not something I use that often and can make it work.
cmiller1 3y ago
> things have to be made with generic parts This seems tricky to legislate though. How do regulators decide which parts are like this? How do you deal with "generic parts" holding back innovation in cases where someone has invented an improved version of that part but it's not available as a generic part yet?
- isilofi 3y ago
  There are standards for sizes of screws, washers, motors, cables, plugs, sockets, ... Just create a bunch more of those standards, e.g. for batteries, legislate their use, done. As a side effect, products become cheaper because parts will then be available off-the-shelf at economy-of-scale prices, and supply problems also become less likely because there will be numerous vendors for each part. However, there will be two problems: some things, like cases and special moldings are hard to standardize. So I would suggest legislating that 3D-printing instructions (STL, material, finishing steps) be made available as soon as the part itself is unavailable or too expensive. And very innovative parts should be exempt for the first few years, provided they are measurably and provably better than the standardized equivalents and that a new standard is being created from them.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    > There are standards for sizes of screws, washers, motors, cables, plugs, sockets, ... Looking at my iFixit screwdriver bit set for electronics, which sports some 60+ bits and still doesn't cover everything I happen upon, I'm thinking the standards are being less than helpful here. I mean, it's good to have them, but it would be better to have way fewer equivalent options.
    - isilofi 3y ago
      Most of those are not standardized according to any proper standard. They are intentionally obfuscated to make access and repairs difficult.
- Aerbil313 3y ago
  It’s the tension between technological progress and societal inertia at its fundamentals. Exact same argument can be applied to many areas including software. You can’t solve it. It’ll be solved when technological progress stops.
h0l0cube 3y ago
Literally a whole section of TFA is devoted to this: > Astute readers may have noticed one typical element missing from the price setting factors listed above: competitiveness.
- kazinator 3y ago
  It's hard for astute readers to read that far into something that is constantly telling them what they already know.
Rygian 3y ago
The rule should be that the total cumulative cost of all the spare parts for an appliance must be lower than 80% of the price of the appliance brand new.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  The price of all the spare parts to build an assembly will always be higher than the finished product, absent some crazy imbalance of very high labor and very low parts costs. (Arguably, a block of wood that you can whittle a product out of would sell for less than the finished product, but anything mass-produced will have spare parts priced at some small multiple of the finished good price.) Why? It's incredibly labor-intensive and logistics-intensive to track and offer one M10x1.25x12mm bolt or one main PCB for a $30 product. When I'm mass producing 5K units, I need 5K PCBs, 15K bolts, 5K upper case halves, 5K lower case halves, 5K displays, 5K buttons, etc. and I can arrange to have them delivered lineside in kits or whatever form I need and I'm pretty much going to use up everything I order in a very predictable way. When you need 1 display and 2 bolts, I have no guarantee that I can sell all the spare parts I made and stocked, and each little fiddly item I have to have someone inventory, put away, fetch, box, pack, and ship to you. It's going to cost more or you're not going to get it. (Today, you mostly can't get it.)
- petsfed 3y ago
  This only works if you can only get like half of the assembly in spares. Otherwise, all I have to do to undercut the literal manufacturer is find cheaper labor to assemble the final product. I like capping the cost of the replacement parts, but you have to factor in the additional labor cost of individually packaging, inventorying, storing, and shipping pieces that are going to go to final assembly either as a kit, or bulked in such a way that a spare-parts shipper cannot just part them out efficiently. So the total cost, before shipping and tax, of a stack of replacement parts to fully rebuild widget X should cost more than the fully assembled thing, but should probably cost less than 2 or 3 widget Xs.
- refurb 3y ago
  The cost of a given part could change over time.

Dalewyn 3y ago

If Right to Repair was about the Right to Save Money rather than guaranteeing basic consumer rights, the advocates should have specified as such. I have no sympathy for misrepresented idealogies, let alone ones driven by greed (in this case consumer greed). Y'all got your Right to Repair guaranteed, nowhere did it stipulate that had to be below <X> cost.

kayodelycaon 3y ago
Yeah but I don’t think it’s reasonable for replacement parts to cost nearly as much as a new device unless those parts do make up a substantial of the manufacture cost. Making repair more expensive than buying new defeats the purpose of repair.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  The purpose of repair is to reduce waste and guarantee a consumer's right to do with his things as he pleases. Saving some money by repairing is certainly nice, but that is a side effect and not the primary objective.
  - kayodelycaon 3y ago
    I think my point was having the repair being more expensive than new would defeat the goal of reducing waste.
    - Dalewyn 3y ago
      What? Why would an expensive repair "defeat the goal" of reducing waste? I am repairing it, there is no waste produced.
- trealira 3y ago
  It can also just be for preservation purposes. A lot of old game consoles are dying, and so are CRT televisions (which just aren't manufactured anymore). Enthusiasts would want both of these to be repairable so that old games can be played forever (but AFAIK, only CRTs are actually repairable). The supply of both of them are shrinking, so only repairability would help their longevity. I guess that also ties into how long the guarantee of repairability should last. Nothing lasts forever; at some point, the parts to make the technology may stop being manufactured and sold.

andrewla 3y ago

Holy unintended side effects, Batman! I have to say that I did not see this coming when I heard about right-to-repair legislation. It seems like there is one workaround for a reseller; I can just buy Bosch washing machines new, and disassemble them for parts. In the worst case, the most commonly failing part will cost as much as one washing machine. Plus the cost of carrying inventory. Or I guess you could try to do it on-demand, but you've still got a bunch of motor-less washing machines in the shed out back.

jjbickerstaffe 3y ago
For many products there seems to be a thriving ecosystem on ebay of people taking genuine manufacturer parts, subdividing them, and reselling the smaller individual parts for consumers to use.

kayodelycaon 3y ago

Part of the problem here is we don’t know the margins of this stuff. Just how badly are we being screwed? Probably pretty bad but… Manufacturing cost for a non-OEM part is not representative of total cost to an OEM to provide quality-assured and warrantied spares of said part to customers. Some parts are stored as complete assemblies. A unique screw may not be stocked as a separate item. It’s possible replacing a damaged or missing subassembly puts the whole thing out of tolerances. The majority of these arguments are probably complete bullshit. Repairability is the cost of doing business. This is going to be a pain to enforce. Hopefully enough companies get painful penalties to deter the rest from playing this game.

roywashere 3y ago
And as the article stated: it can differ from vendor to vendor. I used to own an 8 year old Honda Civic and spare parts were difficult to obtain and expensive. Later I owned a 30+ year old Mercedes and parts were relatively cheap and easy to obtain and shipped locally next business day. With electronics it sucks a little that it seems for almost all brands everything is expensive and difficult. It does not really help that many electronics (such as the mentioned grass trimmers) are so extremely cheap to begin with.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  > 8 year old Honda Civic and spare parts were difficult to obtain and expensive What parts did you find difficult or expensive? We've owned a 2005 CR-V (a jacked-up AWD Civic, basically) and I've had no problems or complaints with the few items I've needed to source. RockAuto almost always gets them to me the next day or 2 days in the worst common case. (I agree that parts availability for Mercedes is also good, but I'm a little surprised to hear of parts issues [other than perhaps interior plastic panels] on a Honda Civic.)

Dnguyen 3y ago

I try to repair as much as I can because I don't want stuff end up in the trash. If the parts are expensive, we need a way to source the parts from the non-fully functional units out there. From my experience, most people find the repair a daunting task and won't even think about it.

MostlyStable 3y ago

I know that relative to the size of the whole market, the number of consumers interested enough in repairing their stuff to consider it when purchasing is small, but does anyone know of any places that actually include both ease of repair and availability of parts in their review system? iFixit it does it for a small subset of electronics, but I'd love to be able to find the equivalent for things like power tools, kitchen tools, appliances, etc. Does Consumer Reports check this? I know they do reliability, but do they include repair? I think I'd be willing to pay if there was a reputable place I could check. Especially if it was possible to see if there are particular brands that are generally good about this (which might help decide in the case that a specific product isn't yet assessed).

trealira 3y ago
The article mentions the the French indice de réparabilité, but it's not perfect (and you need to speak French). > For some products, the French indice de réparabilité can help you take this into account, in order to choose a washing machine that scores 10/10 for spare parts price instead of one that scores 2,5/10, or a TV that scores 7,5/10 instead of one that scores 0/10.(7) However, you cannot search for or filter products by spare parts score on any website. You have to check them one by one by reviewing the scoring grid, which may not even be available online—although the seller is legally required to provide it upon request. This is the website: https://www.indicereparabilite.fr/ https://www.indicereparabilite.fr/
- AshamedCaptain 3y ago
  Ah yes, the repair score. Where something practically disposable like a Samsung foldable device (where you just can't do anything without destroying the main screen) scores a whopping 8/10 ( https://cdn.woopic.com/c10f167280f2414abb346a5347e1ecd9/prod/binaries/files/958357_27947390_1_samsung_galaxy_zfold5_calcul_indice_de_reparabilite.pdf https://cdn.woopic.com/c10f167280f2414abb346a5347e1ecd9/prod... ) , while something like the Fairphone scores just one extra point at 9/10. For comparison, iFixit gave the Fold a 2/10, and the Fairphone a 10/10.
  - 3y ago

psynister 3y ago

I ran into this same thing recently. My dryer needed new electronics, basically the same price as buying a new dryer. My wife had strong opinions about JUST buying a new dryer so guess who has a new washer AND dryer?

nobodyandproud 3y ago
One could say that the choice of buying over repairing was a wash.

MostlyStable 3y ago

My personal experience with this was with a blender. The mount that held the motor went bad (turns out it was due to incredibly spindly supports that had broken. It probably saved a few cents in material costs but resulted in the whole thing failing years earlier than it probably should have), but luckily, the mounting bracket was available, and at an eminently reasonable price. Unfortunately, during this process, the mounting bracket holding the control board in place also broke (they did not use very high quality plastic), and unfortunately that piece was only sold as an assembly with the entire control board which was priced basically identically to the whole blender. It's currently sitting in a cupboard waiting for me to get the energy to get a 3d printed replacement, since I am having trouble throwing away what is otherwise a perfectly serviceable blender except for 1 small broken piece of plastic. Unfortunately, this particular problem is not one that I think can be legislated away (or at least not without the legistlation causing more problems than it fixes). The only way it gets fixed is if consumers start to care and start basing their purchases at least partially on repairability (including price). And that kind of culture shift is hard.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
> The only way it gets fixed is if consumers start to care and start basing their purchases at least partially on repairability (including price). And that kind of culture shift is hard. It is not technically hard. Just hit new goods with a sufficient tax such that buyers have no choice but to start caring about longevity and repairability. Of course, it is practically impossible since people like being able to buy more stuff.
- pixl97 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigouvian_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigouvian_tax The political problems section is what to read, in general, no one is going to vote this on themselves.
  - n2d4 3y ago
    Right to repair wouldn't be a pigouvian tax. There are no negative externalities to selling a product that is unrepairable — no one but the buyer gets harmed by it — it's just that people buy products before sufficiently informing themselves about what to do when they break. Instead, a pigouvian tax would be on something like, say, me offering you to punch an uninvolved third-party that you don't like in exchange for money. I may be happy because I made money, and you may be happy because you wanted to see someone punch said third-party, but overall it would still be negative sum because the third-party would obviously not be happier. So one way to fix that is by taxing it. (A less extreme example is environmental pollution.) Taxing unrepairable products would be much more like taxing addictive drugs that pose no danger to other people, where the legislation protects people from their own bad decisions.

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mytailorisrich 3y ago

This was expected and foreseen. Devices and appliances are manufactured with huge economies of scale and are, all in all, cheap. Spare parts are going to cost and, especially, professional labour is going to cost. It's never going to make much financial sense to repair cheap-ish devices.

pixl97 3y ago
Yep, typically all the parts are made in bulk as in... Company: Build me 1 million washing machines. Of course this is 1 million barrels, controller boards, frames, etc. The people building the parts are going to build in a little bit of overrun to deal with warranty and factory damage, but there simply isn't enough extra stock laying around to keep them running for decades.
Crosseye_Jack 3y ago
Depends on the device/appliance imo. I've repaired my washer and dryer a couple of times (a pump failed on both, had to strip and clean the washer once after someone used it to clean a old teddy bear and didn't put it in a wash bag(the bear came apart)), the part was manufactured by a number of companies (prob the same OEM suppliers, just without the brand stamped into it) and was pretty quick to replace the part myself. A couple of years ago my parents dryer packed up (heating element died), I went down to double check the issue, ordered the part (off Amazon of all places, was more expense then some other places, but next day delivery!) and swapped the part the next day (Took the lid off, which gave access to the screws for the front panel, popped that off, unscrewed and disconnected the old heater, reversed the process to put it back together, jobs done!). Rang my step bother to tell him it was fixed and he was in the process of buying them new dryer. When it comes to most appliances, "professional" labour isn't required, just someone handy with a screwdriver and can follow along to a YouTube video. The thing I've come across with real life friends is that they either just need a small nudge to do it themselves or they value their time more than the cost of hiring someone / buying a new one. (though, me personally, I wouldn't touch gas with a 10 ft pole!) EDIT: Also repaired a far few TV's for friends & family too, but I also have a decent soldering setup which I don't expect "normies" to have, Always fun when you can fix someones "broken" TV with a few pennies worth of capacitors because its just a bad power supply!

boatsie 3y ago

Another issue with this is that the part that fails often is poorly designed or not durable in the first place. So you spend money and time to replace it and then it will just fail again. Zero incentive to improve the part by the manufacturer. I think the solution is requiring manufacturers to sell warranties that cover full labor and materials or replacement. Then at least you could see if a manufacturer selling something cheaply has a very high “full warranty” price, it’s likely because it has a high failure rate. This would be the only way to incentivize fewer failures and repairs.

Rygian 3y ago
2-year seller warranty is already a legal obligation in the EU.
- verve_rat 3y ago
  But 2 years isn't long enough. A washing machine or an oven should last at least a decade. I'd like to see a legally mandated warranty system where a new appliance should last 5 years with no repairs, and 20 years with repairs that total no more than 25% of the original purchase price.
  - system2 3y ago
    Luckily, washing and laundry machines are easy to repair with generic replacement parts. My LG washer had an issue with water valve selenoids, I replaced them for under $35 (the repair man asked $300). Also, my Whirlpool washer had an issue with basket rails. $9 fix from amazon. The bigger concern is probably smaller electronics as plastic parts are easily replaced and found on marketplaces.
    - rssoconnor 3y ago
      Today I had my hose replaced in my portable dishwasher (costing me half the price of the dishwasher for parts and labour). I watched the whole processes, and while it isn't all that complicated, I'm left skeptical that I could have successfully performed the repair myself. In particular I don't have the fancy crimping tool (probably the wrong name for it) that the repair person had. I didn't have the inflatable little pillow thing that helped cushion the tipped over dishwasher. I didn't know which screws to unscrew to remove the top and panelling. I didn't know the top slides backwards to remove. I'm not sure what the lubricant he used when slipping on the drain hose. At one point there was a cable tie that I probably would have cut, but now I understand it was tying down a different hose than the ones being removed. Even the repair person had trouble assembling lining up the two screws in the back with the frame (again using the little inflatable pillow to help lift the machine just a little bit). Assuming I could even complete it, it probably would have taken me at least 4.5 hours instead of 1.5 hours. Probably more. I don't know. It's a bit weird since I'm pretty comfortable opening my tower PC, and replacing the hard drive or installing a new heat sink. I even opened up my mom's doorbell and managed to fix the micro-switch inside (cracking it a little bit in the process), which I'm a bit proud of. So it's not like I'm entirely inept.

sparker72678 3y ago

Just about every proposed regulation in this article would dramatically increase the selling price of nearly all goods, and dramatically hinder new entrants from selling new products by increasing the burden to get started. If that's the set of tradeoffs you want to make, ok, fine. But be up-front about it. Consumer goods, by and large, are not markets with massive profit margins. They're markets of incredible scale with slim margins that generate large revenue as a result. You're not going to get better, more repairable products out of this. You're going to get fewer, more expensive products.

WWLink 3y ago
> dramatically hinder new entrants from selling new products Armchair product engineering thoughts: A lot of kickstarters seemed to set themselves up for failure by trying to make a hermetically sealed apple-style product and have it produced in china without ever considering if they could build it locally, if they could get it produced in smaller quantities - if at all.... I get the whole "it can't be made at a competitive price if you don't build for an economy of scale" - but what seemed to happen is a startup would attempt to sell a widget with a design that was all hopes and dreams, immediately fly out to china, and spend a whole bunch of time and money coming up with something that looked great on paper.... but then had a fundamental flaw that required them to throw away all of the initial batch of products - maybe even the first few batches, burning up every penny they gathered in their funding campaign. "Hold on there cowboy" is my take on this - it's easy to throw a design together that looks slick and ends up quickly becoming ewaste... startups (and startup-like projects) are usually some of the worst offenders. Think of things like Ouya or (lol) Google Stadia or any of a plethora of IoT crap that sounded cool, didn't quite achieve the desired results, and ended up in the landfill. I'd argue that all this "bureaucratic red-tape" would help limit how much ewaste gets produced, at least a little bit.
- jkestner 3y ago
  I’ve made a conscious effort to build our (Kickstarted!) stuff domestically. With the exception of one product in China, which was still an educational PITA. Can’t claim the things are Made in America when a critical component is fabbed overseas, but it’s great to talk with people in my time zone. Going to be even better to drive over to the injection molder to dial in fit and finish. OTOH, the examples you cite and many more are junked not because they’re made in China but due to a lack of software support/remediation. I’m not sure if there’s a business model that incentivizes this, so I’m rooting for the regulations that are slowing coming along on this.

deviantbit 3y ago

I've experienced overpriced parts. I've also experienced the inability to acquire parts. I was able to completely rebuild my Dyson vacuum cleaner, with Dyson parts for a fraction of a new one. My A/C had a control board that went out, and only an authorized dealer could sell a replacement. The catch was, the dealer had to install it. So, since I have the skills, so I thought, I pulled the board, and went to repair it myself. They wanted to charge $1100, when the bad part was $7 dollars including shipping. But guess what, they have a battery backed latching relay to detect if the boards are disconnected. Those MFr's. I replaced the entire system after this fiasco. There is an Asian company that made fighter planes that escorted bombers to Pearl Harbor, that now make HVAC systems. I would avoid them. Making your products proprietary is one thing, but intentionally engineering them this way is criminal.

petsfed 3y ago
That fits in the same zone as DRM for printer cartridges or coffee flavor cups. That's asshole design. I absolutely understand the urge to validate the inputs to make sure the thing will keep working, but leveraging that as a competitive moat is just adversarial to customers.
Nick87633 3y ago
Is that Mitsubishi? I would be curious to know how the anti-tamper relay setup was engineered. It would be great to have a hacker's guide on how to disable it!

merinofg 3y ago

My father owns an electronic repair shop specialized in TV, cameras and Music devices. The company has official agreements with the big brands to offer official technical support for their products, meaning that they have internal access to repair manuals and repair pieces to order from the official brand. Having a spare part more expensive than the product is a usual tactic from the manufacturer to not comply with the current EU law of producing and having stock of that piece for a minimum amount of years. The 99% of the customers that are notified of the price of the piece, drop the idea of repairing it as is cheaper to have a new one. The funny part is that some customers still decides to repair them, and if you try to call the manufacturer to order the repair piece, either they delay months the shipment, or they end up sending the full original product from some old stock as replacement to give to the customer (or to disassemble in the repair shop if the customer still wants his one). If current laws are, how to say this, "creatively (but legally) avoided" by companies, I really doubt that new regulations will help at all.

spaceribs 3y ago
It's just a matter of closing the loopholes then? I see law/regulation as a lot like releasing software, you need to iterate towards an ideal. Expecting an MVP to be perfect right out of the gate seems counterintuitive.
- ygjb 3y ago
  Not just closing the loopholes; specifically imposing consumer awardable penalties for failing to support a product - something like treble damages for willful infringement should do the trick. Can't provide a part within a specific time frame at maximum cost of the appropriate fraction of the price, for a defined period of time after the product is sold? Great, the consumer is awarded an amount equal to 3 times the MSRP at product release to ensure they can acquire a replacement product!
TylerE 3y ago
How long should a manufacturer being required to provide parts support? Building tons of parts and then warehousing them for decades has a very real cost.

fdgh5 3y ago

Stop regulating the market. You are killing them, not helping.

isilofi 3y ago
Some parts of the market need to be killed, and quickly. Wasteful economy is killing the planet, and we need to dial down the produce-buy-throwaway-buy cycle.
- fdgh5 3y ago
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  - isilofi 3y ago
    What an incredibly elaborate argument.

iteratethis 3y ago

An additional problem is companies simply going out of business. Happens a lot in the middle-segment of electronics. It's an unstoppable rat-race of cheap crappy products. The issue is that (too) cheap is the problem but also widely loved. I would love to pay more for long-lasting products that are repairable and well-recyclable but most people don't.

fn-mote 3y ago

The article (and comments) don't seem to make what I think are essential points. * Free-market competition is essential for price-setting. Aftermarket parts must be allowable. IMO no solution will ever work if the prices are set by a single vendor. People get mad, but * "Parts pairing" and DRM are a real problem. They prevent the establishment of a market for replacement parts. I would like to see a discussion of banning this practice. * Patents preventing the manufacture of "clone" replacement parts is another issue, but even that takes a back seat to software lock (or hardware lock, as a comment below mentions [1]). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39096846 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39096846 > [...] they have a battery backed latching relay to detect if the boards are disconnected [...]

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nobodyandproud 3y ago

As long as businesses can pass along the cost of disposal to customers or elsewhere, they have every incentive to fight repairs. Maybe forcing buy-back of broken products at a significant fraction of the original price? Though that'd incentivize "home appliances as a service" or fly-by-night businesses.

steve76 3y ago

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bigbabybuckman 3y ago

I'll scream into the void on this one. I loved my Pixel 5, it was the best phone I'd ever had. Pulling down with the fingerprint sensor in the back was a revelation. I fixit wants 200+CAD to send me a replacement screen. I have been desperate for these to go on sale for a while. It was a hard choice but the pixel 7 I have now, with carrier discounting, will in total cost me 70CAD.

thomasreggi 3y ago

Is there any DIY / 3D Printed community-made projects around designing household appliances? I'm mainly thinking about vacuums but even blenders and other things. Im not talking about everything being hand-made but designs can be made with popular motors, blades, and things of that nature. I like the idea of an off-the-shelf vacuum using the most efficient or readily available motors, and bags.

up2isomorphism 3y ago

Years of observation tells me that this is not a industry issue rather than consumer issue - We have failed to equip normal people with adequate sense of understanding/appreciation of non-straightforward things. With more and more customers not even wanting to read a user manual, businesses that give customer option to repair, in general, does not survive. Take X230 as an example, I spent $6xx in 2012 to buy it, equiped with 128GB ssd and 4GB memory and I spend around 300$ to upgrade it 1TB SSD/16GB Ram, plus something like $200 over the years for various things like fans, batteries. Even in 2021 I am not feeling it is slow, while I have probably made $1.5M worth of software work with that thing. BTW, none of these repair or upgrades is difficult in any sense. Do I want to buy something like again if it exists, surely I will. But do majority of people care? No. And during 10 years span, an average Apple user likely spent over 10K on laptops, while lenovo gets $600. I just do not know how such business can continue.

DoItToMe81 3y ago
Yeah, no. The industry intentionally making repairs impossible or excessively costly is absolutely an industry problem. Apple is especially responsible for this. Replacing parts on various iPhones will disable a whole slew of features depending on the part and model, which has nothing at all to do with "consumers not wanting to repair"

jacknews 3y ago

The right to repair laws should extend to modularity and standard interfaces. I'm not a great fan of legislation, but sometimes it's the only way to align for-profit enterprise's self interest with the common good. An example is the connection between a blender base and the jar. The manufacturers should be required to declare, and provide documentation for, the standard it adheres to, which would of course be available for 3rd parties to manufacture to. Ideally manufacturers would converge on a single, or a few shared standards, and I'm sure there are legislative ways to nudge them towards that, and discourage the natural tendency toward fragmentation, proprietary differentiation, etc, aka monopoly power. The PC world is a stunning example of the power of standard interfaces between components, and USB is a great example of where government can step in to the process; the EU usb-phone-charger mandate immediately solved, or at least vastly improved, the wasteful, expensive and inconvenient cacophony of proprietary phone chargers for consumers.

netfortius 3y ago

Is[n't] the choice of language menu also supposed to work on the actual linked article? I think it needs a little repair...