I totally support this. I accidentally cracked the touch screen of my car radio console. The car is nothing special, a Ford Mondeo that is a few years old.<p>Cost to replace touch screen module: more than the <i>entire</i> value of the car! That is insane. Effectively, if I want to claim from insurance - crack the touch screen (it is a replaceable module) and have to scrap the entire car.<p>In this case, I managed to get a replacement (fitted) from a scrapped car for 1/10 of the price the Ford dealer was quoting me.
Wages have gone up and consumer goods have gone down in price and build quality. It's not feasible to have a repair business any more. Growing up, there were still loads of repair businesses around. You could fix anything.<p>If build quality and price go up, you can revert to an economy where you would fix your broken appliance once or twice before you replacing it.<p>But what's the incentive for the manufacturers?
I agree with this too. I always try to repair things first and then replace them if necessary (even if it is a torn shirt or backpack, a broken zipper on a shoe or broken connector on a laptop).<p>Also, I try to buy things which are durable, but a lot of times it is hard to tell what will be durable so I go with the pricier option hoping it will last longer. This is not always true, especially for shoes and clothing, but in electronics too. The problem is when someone looks for reviews, they only find reviews of new models, but there's no website which would say this product can be used for X years without breaking. Do you guys know about such a site? Or something similar? I am always thinking about starting such website, which would provide reviews for older things, so there would be chronological ratings and we would see which brands make quality products and which of them not. ...but that would need a lot of input data to be useful and I am not sure how could this be started. Or even if this would be useful for others or only I am concerned with this.<p>What do you guys think about this?
Of course, the flipside of this is the flipside of Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness - if the cheap boots that fall apart quickly didn't exist, Sam Vimes would not be able to buy boots at all in the first place.<p>The solution is, of course, to put more people in a position where they can afford to buy the more expensive boots and see the value in doing so.
Why can't we have economies that can be stable without the sky falling, can grow when wanted, and shrink when needed without a cascade of catastrophies? Can't we? It's a honest question, I have no clue.<p>Because I also think this is a great idea too, but everything else being the same, the general insanity being the same, something else will probably give. On the other hand, if we did have this hypothetical more flexible economic system, making things well instead of hustling and externalizing costs might come as a lasting side effect of that.
Although I would welcome this, I can't understand how such broad demands can be enforced.<p>If the EU is really interested in increasing the lifetime of products, it's simple, just increase the mandatory warranty from 2 to 5 (or some other appropriate number) years.<p>That would right away, increase the lifetime of the products, but would also, put a strain on the manufacturers to make it easier to repair (after all, if you have to increase the number of repairs to your products, you are going to make it cheaper to repair it in order to save money).
Perhaps I'm being naive, but how about reducing sales tax ('VAT' in UK) for items which come with long guarantee periods? So sale of a washing machine with a 10 year guarantee would be taxed at 5% instead of 10%, or similar. Wouldn't this give manufacturers an incentive to make more durable products?
I recently changed the display on my Kobo Touch and was appalled at what I found inside it.<p>The battery is glued to the case and the wires are soldered to the board. The display is also glued to the case (I had to break the original display into bits in order to take it out).<p>The whole thing was designed to be disposable. This just seems wrong. It's unfair to the customer and bad for the environment.
I agree. We need something like this in the US. By law, electronic products sold in EU carries 2yrs warranty and I always wondered why U.S has only 1yr warranty. I can think of an incident where my laptop crapped out right after a year of purchase but the manufacturer was nice enough to repair it for free.<p>With phones running $800+ nowadays, i would expect it to last longer (3yrs min.) like a laptop.
> 77 per cent of EU consumers would rather repair their goods than buy new ones<p>This is most likely a misleading stat. You can repair most things if you're willing to spend the money or time to do it. Many consumer goods cost more to repair than it's worth. No one is going to do that.
I agree. I live in the EU and bought a washing machine for 450 eur. After 1 year and 2 months a big hole in the Drum appeared and this makes it flood my apartment. LG wants 530 eur to fix it, so obviously not worth it.<p>My parents had 2 washing machines in their whole life, in contrast...
The issue (that only partially has been solved by the WEEE directives in Europe) is the same as most of the issues when money is involved.<p>The best form of recycling is of course repairing, you only throw away (and need to dispose of) a tiny piece of (metal, plastic, etc.) instead of having to dispose kilograms or tons of the same stuff (the whole whatever).<p>But the point is "who is gonna pay for disposal?" a part of the WEEE directives (related to solar panels) goes into the right direction but still, see the previous thread here:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13250584" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13250584</a><p>The manufacturer saves today but will (maybe) pay tomorrow.<p>The only way (unfortunately not very practical) is to have manufacturers deposit today (in some sort of fund) the sum that will be needed tomorrow for disposals, with some sort of scale so that longer lasting products will need less money to be deposited or maybe allowing the withdrawal of a quote of the deposit after some lasting performance has been measured, that would make them think about the opportunity of making shorter or longer lasting (or non-repairable vs. repairable) devices.
It seems like a good idea to rule on this: I always used to fix my electronic products... Up to recently it was sometimes difficult to find the issue, but always fine with opening and closing.<p>I had my very first anxiety thrill ungluing an iPad window to replace the broken microphone; and I look with anxiety at my S7, thinking of when the battery starts aging.
Is there also a term that describes this phenomena ?
"Each year we get an update for product X with a few minor changes that makes the new version parts incompatible with the previous year version (maybe not all parts are incompatible).
I noticed this with washing machines, I wanted to buy a similar model with something that I own and they made a different model, redesigned the outside, maybe small changes inside.
I also know that cars get updates each year, some stuff gets changed on the front of the car to look "better" but now under the hood some parts do not fit and need to be moved around and redesigned, then the car needs to be tested again.
I think it would be healthy to launch a product, then in first year(s) analyze the defects your products get, next product would be an evolution that addresses the issues.
I agree if you have new ideas on how to improve your product go ahead and make the new version but don't make a new model of a microwave that is identical with previous one except you changed the shape, moved some buttons and added a gimmick feature.
The EU will have fun then with much more expensive consumer goods, and businesses keeping flagship lines of products out of them for sale. More likely this is just another tax increase worded as "consumer protection." No business will really design products based on government say, but will just raises prices to cover whatever penalty fee they issue.
Not to play the free market card too aggressively, but isn't there already a solution to this, called "extended warranties"? Whether provided by the manufacturer or from the retail seller, they provide a way for customers to pay an extra fee in order to extend the product's lifetime.<p>In theory, they even give a way to price out the effective longevity of comparable devices by looking at the prices of the warranties.<p>In the end, my understanding is that customers do not assign a lot of value to that lifetime extension, and as a result the extended warranties are generally not purchased.<p>If the EU enacts measures to enforce product longevity, they force customers to buy something that they have already chosen not to buy.
The article says that consumers are discouraged by the cost of repair.<p>A few weeks ago, I repaired an eltronical appliance and was surprised to see that all screws were screwed into plastic. As I unscrewed them to access the inside of the device, the plastic around the screw broke.<p>I think there should be laws that prevent screwing into plastic. That just makes no sense appart from upfront cost. Once the plastic is broken, there is no way but to throw the broken device away. Unless you can somehow glue everything back together, but that seems unpractical.<p>It's like devices are not even planned to be repaired. They are designed to be sold and then abandoned. That's the real issue. Not cost of repair.
This made me think about the lamp that shines for 100 years in a fire department somewhere. It even has a cam <a href="http://www.centennialbulb.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.centennialbulb.org/</a><p>Now lamps have a limited lifespan because of the manufacturers, so they have more sales.<p>I think this was the article: <a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy" rel="nofollow">http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/the-great-lightbu...</a>
As I read through some of the comments on this thread what jumped out at me is that products today are designed with DFM in mind rather than DFR. Design for Manufacturing vs. Design for Repairs.<p>Industrial products are different. There's a class of product that must be designed for easy maintenance. Not so in consumer-land. For example, to replace some of the lights on a BMW you have to remove the front bumper. Crazy.
I kind of want these rules to go into effect in the EU just to see what happens.<p>I don't expect good things to happen, but one way or another it would be instructive.
They can start by changing the warranty regulations [1] to be valid 10 years instead of a ridiculous two years.<p>[1]: <a href="http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guarantees-returns/index_en.htm" rel="nofollow">http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guar...</a>
The solution is metered trash/pollution for everyone.<p>The more you throw away, the more you pay.
The more waste you produce, the more you pay.
The more you harm the environment, the more you pay.<p>This will incentivize individuals to throw less away, hence buy less and seek more durable products.
From TFA: "if a repair takes longer than a month, the guarantee should be extended to match the repair time,"<p>Uh, no. That will insure that repairs always take 29 days, except in february where they will take 27 daze.<p>Simply always extend the guarantee by the amount of any repair time.
Finally.. Although I am not optimistic about seeing results soon. Companies will go to extremes to circumvent such rules.<p>But it's shocking to see their lack of insight:<p>> software should be easier to repair and update<p>ROFL!
The EU also has a 3-year minimum warranty requirement on consumer products.<p>Much of what the EU does is to make buying from another EU country within the EU a seamless experience. They just prohibited phone roaming charges within the EU, for example. This is the "single European market" concept.
In other news, the parliament took a vote affirming previous decisions that TV shows should be funnier.<p>..I guess that was trite. The EU parliament is in a constitutional limbo state. It doesn’t have real power or a predefined legislative jurisdiction, so voters don’t take it seriously. They elect quirky, fring-ey members they wouldn’t elect to their own national parties.<p>I’m in favour of durable products, but I don’t see how this is en route to policies that affect this.
Some of their proposals are just the product of people who have no concept of how technology works. Hell some of it reads like an anti-Apple manifesto being that they integrate battery and LED and such. What would a tablet with a user replaceable battery look like? How many years must they last before they are long lasting? If a battery in a laptop last four years for a nominal charge is that sufficient?<p>With regards to products like cars where the makeup can come from hundreds of manufactures who decides what needs to adhere to the rules and what doesn't? Someone posted about a cracked screen on a radio, how far down the component tree do we go before we stop?<p>I do like one section, no software should enable the fixing of a user owned product. The exception would be software that locks out repairs that might allow for unauthorized access; what I mean is that this could be an end run to making touch id easily hacked by government by forcing it to be serviced by third parties.