What’s your opinion on the right to repair movement?

Link? Are you talking about reparations or something else?

@kneesox https://www.bmc.com/blogs/right-to-repair/

@kneesox
It means the right to repair your own technological devices, or being able to have third parties repair them, and not be forced to rely on the manufacturer.
Manufacturers are of course opposed to it, because they would rather have you buy a new device.
This of course requires two things: parts and technical documents. Manufacturers not only do not provide those, but they also take legal action against anyone else that does.
For example, crApple colludes with customs to impound and confiscate genuine parts as “counterfeit”, to prevent third party repair shops from being able to repair apple products. They also started to implement hardware locks, to make even genuine parts incompatible with their products, if the serial numbers are not exactly matched to each other,

Oh, thanks, @canidmajor and @ragingloli. I hadn’t heard of this at all.

Does this include taking things to a repair shop? I can take my phone or laptop in to a fixit shop. Do they have a right to repair my device but I don’t?

I suppose there’s also a question of warranties and liability. Always protecting themselves with the legal stuff but forget the customer. Same reason water bottles say do not refill?

I bought a shower head that turned out to be low flow, much too low for a decent shower. The leaflet came with it said basically, if you break it right here in this spot the warranty is voided. So my son broke it right there and it became a fully functional shower head. Somebody on that documentation team must have given a moment’s thought to the customer, right?

I’m generally supportive of the idea, but I don’t think it should encumber the design of the products. In other words, I would disagree with legislation that disallowed components being soldered into place, requiring sockets instead.

Some things are hard to repair, but that makes them lighter, or more water resistant, or have more room for batteries, etc. The consumer should be able to decide if they want to buy a product that’s difficult to repair or not. That said, preventing 3rd party repair shops from obtaining replacement components and parts, and using firmware to exclude otherwise compatible parts because of serial numbers should be illegal.

Here is a short example of the issue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCFP9P7lIvI

I tried to get my son’s phone repaired, and the shop guy (who’d done other work for me) said that phone was made so you basically couldn’t open it without breaking it. I think it was a Samsung but I’m not sure. I said go ahead and try because it’s useless now anyway.

@ragingloli Rossman in particular is championing the movement and testifies repeatedly before state legislators. He is especially vindictive when it comes to APPLE and the underhanded shit they foist on consumers.

I’m for right to repair.

I also think built-in obsolescence should get mightily discouraged, as well.

For a few months I was getting warnings that my HP printer would no longer have parts available. I swear to you not long after the warnings I started having problems with my printer. The problem had to do with my laptop talking to the printer. I find it very suspicious. I still can get it to work usually, but is unreliable now.

I knew Apple had to be screwing with their phones, and then there was that court case or whatever that they were purposely slowing down speed at which the phone worked. @stanleybmanly seems to know more about Apple and the crap they pull. I was very reluctant to buying Apple for years for many reasons, but I do have an iphone now and an ipad over ten years now.

The Japanese car manufacturers gained a lot of market share in the US in the 80’s and 90’s because of reliability while American auto makers were purposely making cars that would fall apart. It seems like a lot of industries have not learned from this.

I don’t see how you can order a company to keep producing parts. I do think it is good customer relations and smart business to keep selling the parts and to build quality products to begin with.

Part of the problem in the US is consumers want items to be very inexpensive. There used to be moderately priced well made appliance, clothing, even cars. There is almost no in between now. It is either choosing something very expensive or very cheap in almost every category. As far as cell phone, they are crazy expensive. I wonder how much they make on each phone. They get you to trade in your phone so there is no secondary market. I don’t like it.

I like the idea because I generally know how things work and am willing to try to repair them. The losers are people who are not capable of doing repairs and end up paying for products at a higher price.
Companies will make up for lost revenues one way or the other. Apple can add a few hundred dollars on to the price of the new iphone n+1 and people will still buy it.

Tempest in a teapot. You can get your own parts. You can take your PC to a computer repair guy and he’ll get the parts to fix it.
I have never experienced anyone trying to force me to buy a new computer.

@Dutchess_III What about a phone? A tablet? An ereader? This doesn’t apply as much to an older model desktop.

A tablet is the same way.
Phones are more difficult and there aren’t phone repairman around every corner like there are with computers.
But even with a phone, if you want to pay to have it repaired, have your service provider send it off.
For most people, the expense to fix it isn’t worth it.

Also, there isn’t a demand for cell phone repair.

You must be very fortunate out there in Kansas. Beyond some very early-in-ownership basics, it is very difficult to get repairs on a, for example, 5 year old tablet.

And yes, there would be a demand on cell phone repairs if one could get cell phones repaired.

There is an enormous demographic of people that would prefer repairs if the companies themselves didn’t inhibit it.

It is difficult to get your service provider to repair your phone, if you did not get your phone from your service provider.

Well duh @ragingloli.

Sometimes it’s simply cheaper to buy a new one. No one makes you do that.

@Dutchess_III Manufacturers have been more and more aggressively designing technological products so that truism that “it’s simply cheaper to buy a new one” will be true for their products, but the reason that is true is artificially created or even forced by the products being designed so that they will break down and/or become obsolete, and be impractical or nearly impossible to repair, and providing little or no information about how to repair them, or even by designing them such that it would be impossible for anyone other than someone with technology only they make to repair them (see modern cars), and/or by adding fine print buried in obligatory legal contracts that say you don’t even have the right to repair them, or your warranty is voided if you open the case, or whatever other abusive power-grabbing evil they manage to get in there.

That is what needs to be addressed @Zaku. Not the “Right to Repair.”

What do you think is different between addressing what I described, and the “right to repair”?

The fact that they make it so difficult should be illegal. That is what should be addressed.
People still have the right to have their phones repaired.