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Nah. Just choose to buy the way you wish to. Vote with your money and don’t artificially restrict where there’s zero issues. Everything works out in the end.

• mschuster91 2y ago
  > The last thing I want is for some government regulation to make it suck like Europe. Are you aware that Europe has a mandatory 2 year minimum warranty period on consumer purchases? A mandatory 14-days no-questions-asked return window on all purchases? In the US, AFAIK you're fully at the mercy of whatever the vendor so graciously offers you. [1] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guarantees-returns/index_en.htm https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...
  • tgma 2y ago
    Yes I am aware and I stand by my statement. Have you actually returned stuff to stores over there? I have returned half eaten cake that I did not like the taste to Costco and didn’t have to face a weird looking employee. No law and regulation necessary just capitalism.
    • timClicks 2y ago
      That's not capitalism, that's culture. In the USA, it's very common to return products because of a change of mind and/or complain. That isn't universal.
      • tgma 2y ago
        The fact that a retailer is willing to accept it despite not being forced to is absolutely the result of capitalism. If they don't, you buy from a competitor. This is not some hypothetical. People in the US routinely choose retailers based on their service experience. In any case, the overall retail experience is much better on west side of the Atlantic and prices are generally better too, without the need of too many "customer protection laws" so I don't think a good case is to be made to copy from a failed continent.
        • csunbird 2y ago
          But, the usual case is that the major companies in the market collude to strip away these kind of offerings, as "free unconditional returns" hurts bottom line of all companies in the market. This is the real power of capitalism. Think about it, for example the TV sector: All companies colluded to reduce the selection of TVs to "Smart" TVs only. I can't just go and buy from a competitor, because it simply does not exist!
          • bombcar 2y ago
            The problem here is just the group that wants them is minuscule. Nobody wants to admit it, but the smart TVs are what people want. You can buy dumb TVs that have no smart features or smart TVs with the smart feature can be completely ignored. Vizio is good for this, but nobody wants to pay for those except commercial units.
            • ghaff 2y ago
              TV companies do try adding features that go beyond dumb display panels. Ask them how that worked for 3D, which people didn't adopt. Yes most TVs are "smart" but I'm pretty sure most people won't pay much of a premium and many use something like an Apple TV instead anyway.
              • bombcar 2y ago
                The premium paid is the $20-50 that the TV manufacturer gets for preinstalling shit on their smart TV. Which is why (currently) Vizio is my doge because it just turns on with ARC and shuts off when the Apple TV does so I don’t even know it’s smart. The stupid Samsung (praise be to the toddler, destroyer of shit tech) wouldn’t even let you switch inputs without being connected to WiFi, or if it could I couldn’t figure it out.
          • tgma 2y ago
            Is that the "usual case" really? I find it very rare actually. You really think "Smart TV" is some collusion/conspiracy and not emergent from the market behavior? The most malicious theory I can come up with is that Smart TV makes more money for the manufacturers due to the ad opportunity, therefore they sell an inferior product to the consumer —in our minds— similar to bundling crapware in Windows laptops, but that still does not make it collusion or market distortion. Under that theory, it just means dumb TV would have to be a comparatively more expensive product and I am willing to bet even the nerds who care about dumb TV will be buying the smart one, airgap it, and connect an Apple TV. Effectively no one would be paying even $50 more for dumb version of a TV. In reality, I believe the average Joe & Jill actually strongly prefer Smart TV.
    • Arn_Thor 2y ago
      How many half eaten cakes would you have to return to monetarily make up for, say, a PC or washing machine that stops working after 4 ½ years? Because you can get that device replaced or repaired in much of Europe, for free. I'm not aware of any US company that offers such a warranty window and actually keeps its word (look at crappy fridges where the company will replace one faulty unit for another with the same problem once, and then you're on your own). And even if some did, they are by far the minority. The voluntary "I'm a good brand, choose me" freebies offered by a company will almost never outmatch that mandated by regulation. The reason is simple: the companies have a fiduciary responsibility to make as much money for shareholders as possible, and if it's marginally cheaper to shorten the warranty period (whithouth seeming out of touch with the rest of the market), the bulk will choose that. Whereas the aim of regulation is always to secure the interest of the consumer. I say "always", but there are exceptions in cases of regulatory capture, which admittedly is much of the US...
      • tgma 2y ago
        Interestingly, the particular retailer in question, actually offers at least "second year warranty" for free to products you purchase from them at no explicit additional cost, so you don't have to make a trade-off by summing all the halves of poor-tasting cakes. The point is there is a choice of retailers. You don't need the regulation hammer for everything.
        • Arn_Thor 2y ago
          So? You’re stuck with a warrantied product that you know has the same defect, unless they’ve changed things since last I saw it. What’s a two-year warranty on a product that breaks after three? The market is not fixing this particular issue. Sure you can choose another manufacturer next time but you’ve already been screwed by one. There was no need for that in the first place. Consumer laws are always a benefit!
          • tgma 2y ago
            I will almost always choose to buy a product if offered at a cheaper price if I can do so by declining longer warranties, so, no, it's not "always a benefit". It's not a fairy tale. Someone has to pay for things.
  • WalterBright 2y ago
    > mandatory 2 year minimum warranty period Such regulations make products more expensive. I'm constantly offered warranties when I buy online. I don't want to be forced to buy them, as I don't need them.
    • tgma 2y ago
      Not sure why you're downvoted. There is material difference in prices of electronics due to whatever reason (taxes, warranties, low scale, etc) to the degree that my European friends often purchase laptops and iPhones when they travel to US.
      • throwaway2037 2y ago
        Do those products have worldwide warranties? Often not. That is a real issue with buying electronics outside your home country.
        • xp84 2y ago
          They usually don't, but that only strengthens their point. People are choosing, instead of paying a European price and getting a very long warranty, to pay a cheaper US price even though they likely won't even get the benefit of our awful 1-year or 90-day warranty.
      • WalterBright 2y ago
        Anytime you get something "for free", you're paying for it one way or another. No amount of legislation can change that, they might as well legislate pi=3.
      • dacryn 2y ago
        those times have long been gone. Warranties were not the driving factor, but taxes and exchange rates. Today, the price difference is negligible on most hardware (smaller than $50 on MSRP on an iPhone if you compare New York to Paris for example)
• cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
  This is fun. The person you’ve replied to has stated a concrete (what they perceive to be) benefit of consumer protection regulation. One that doesn’t seem to limit choice at all, but rather improves visibility. I’m also inserting my own personal experience here. The country I live in, which isn’t in Europe, has similar regulation in place. In response you’re throwing around some vague notion of “freedom” and vague implication of a “better experience” without really explaining how mandatory unit pricing is a bad thing for you as a consumer. Has John Gruber got you all upset about the EU? I’m currently booking a trip to the US and the consumer experience is absolutely terrible. Tax-exclusive “totals”? Resort fees? Give me a break. It sounds like the US consumer experience is more aligned to your obvious libertarian ideology, and that’s the end of it.
  • tgma 2y ago
    Can you think of any downside of that proposal at all? Tax inclusive total means government can screw the business and the end user and hide behind the tax inclusive price tag. Jack up the tax it seems the business is doing it.
    • jcranmer 2y ago
      Funny, given that the product most US consumers are familiar with tax-inclusive pricing (gasoline) is the one product that hasn't had its tax rate changed in decades.
      • DragonStrength 2y ago
        Where? They’re constantly futzing with the taxes on it in my state.
    • ceejayoz 2y ago
      Nothing says you can’t put ($40 of this is government taxes) in the receipt.
    • mkl 2y ago
      Tax-exclusive prices hide the true cost and encourage overspending by making things falsely appear cheaper. Their purpose is for businesses to squeeze more from their customers. In NZ the price you see is the price you pay. The sales tax amount is always clearly stated on receipts, invoices, checkouts, online carts, etc. (by law) and the rate has changed twice in history, so everyone knows when it happens and who is responsible. Everything is explicit and nothing is or can be hidden (we don't do tipping either). In comparison when I visited the USA I never knew how much I would be paying for things, which felt fundamentally unfair and customer-opposed.
• HWR_14 2y ago
  How will the government enforcing a minimum bar on return timelines lead to a worse experience at stores that already exceed those metrics? It might be unnecessary, but how would it hurt?
  • tgma 2y ago
    Various negative consequences but off the top of my head: - Any regulation needs to be written, read, analyzed, made sure to comply with, defend in court, etc. which costs money. - I might want to be very generous and voluntarily take back items from my legit customers because I find out it was good for business, but also have mechanisms in place to prevent abuse by a small minority of bad customers (restrict a subset of products, limits on the number of purchases you can return, etc). Once you codify it in law, it forces my hand in many ways, increasing prices making experience worse for my good customers. - The regulation may change and the retailer may need to suddenly adapt to comply. - It may not hurt those particular stores, but prevents cheaper competitors from emerging, which is a bad thing. To show this whole thing is kind of stupid, where does "two years" come from? Some asshat in European parliament? Why not twenty years? Why not two months?
• kcartlidge 2y ago
  > retail customer experience and return policy is unmatched ... make it suck like Europe. Maybe it's great in the US, I don't know, but it far from sucks in Europe. Amongst other things for returns policies you have a guaranteed 14 day return period for online orders even if there's no issues. Plus there's a minimum 2 years warranty, and a few years more if there's a reasonable expectation for the item in question to last longer. I'm not seeing the issue.