EU Brings In 'Right To Repair' Rules For Appliances (bbc.com) 62
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Household appliances will become easier to repair thanks to new standards being adopted across the European Union. From 2021, firms will have to make appliances longer-lasting, and they will have to supply spare parts for machines for up to 10 years. The rules apply to lighting, washing machines, dishwashers and fridges. But campaigners for the "right to repair" say they do not go far enough as only professionals -- not consumers -- will be able carry out the repairs. The legislation has been prompted by complaints from consumers across Europe and North America infuriated by machines that break down when they are just out of warranty. Under the European Commission's new standards, manufacturers will have to make spares, such as door gaskets and thermostats, available to professional repairers. These parts will have to be accessible with commonly-available tools and without damaging the product. Manufacturers say they are only making the parts available for independent professionals because if consumers were allowed to buy spares and mend their own machines it would raise questions about risk and liability.
The report also notes that "star ratings for the energy efficiency of appliances will be ratcheted up," which "could directly save 20 billion euros on energy bills per year in Europe from 2030 onwards -- equivalent to 5% of EU electricity consumption."
The report also notes that "star ratings for the energy efficiency of appliances will be ratcheted up," which "could directly save 20 billion euros on energy bills per year in Europe from 2030 onwards -- equivalent to 5% of EU electricity consumption."
Liability (Score:4)
Because, people haven't been repairing their own appliances since.....they started selling appliances.
This lame excuse should earn a reward for its lameness. From this lame excuse alone, I think we can expect the spare parts to fix a *designed* failure to cost as much as a new machine.
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After pulling up some specs on the internet, I ordered a few parts, and had it working again 30 minutes.
Government and manufacturer's are just trying to perpetuate control. I hope they never succeed to that level on this side of the pond but I am not sanguine.
Re:Liability (Score:4, Insightful)
Not everything is as simple.
I would never suggest you to fix the compressor on a fridge or the spring on a car. If you don't know what you're doing, you could seriously injure or kill yourself or make your entire house or even neighborhood a Superfund site. With the reliance on ever cheaper switching power supplies in appliances, you don't even know where your line voltage could end up within the appliance.
I can't think of a single winter where some jackass doesn't end up burning down their house or evacuating an entire apartment building because they were going to 'fix this themselves'. I've seen a number of people attempt repairs at things they have no understanding of. It's generally funny but it could be dangerous. I've "repaired" stuff myself like a water valve on my washer which apparently runs on mains voltage with bare contacts right behind the panel opening, I could've easily flooded the basement while electrocuting myself.
If a manufacturer is going to require the user to replace "simple" things like water valves, motors, compressors, gas burners, springs etc. they will have to be made a lot more complicated (think how much extra is involved in fully-replaceable server hardware) and thus more costly and repairs will end up costing even more. After all, the manufacturer is liable for the safety of user-replaceable parts.
Re:Liability (Score:4, Informative)
I would never suggest you to fix the compressor on a fridge or the spring on a car. If you don't know what you're doing, you could seriously injure or kill yourself or make your entire house or even neighborhood a Superfund site.
That's a little dramatic. By "spring" I assume you mean a strut spring, and yeah you're gonna have a real bad day if you screw up trying to replace it. You'd have to screw up pretty bad for it to actually kill you. An no, the refrigerant in your fridge isn't going to turn your house (or neighborhood) into a toxic waste dump. Best case, nothing happens beside having to buy a new fridge because the average home gamer doesn't have access to the tools needed. And the Feds may come talk to you because it's illegal to release Freon. Medium case, you're still buying a fridge, but with some frostbite on your hands/face/wherever it sprayed you. Worst case, you're widow is buying a fridge because you kept your fridge in a small closet for some reason. Citation, MSDS for R134a: http://www.nationalref.com/pdf... [nationalref.com]
That being said, I would agree on both points. If you aren't acutely aware of the hazards of working with such things, you probably shouldn't be working on them. But, a proper repair manual would include potential hazards and their mitigation processes as part of the repair procedure.
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That being said, I would agree on both points. If you aren't acutely aware of the hazards of working with such things, you probably shouldn't be working on them. But, a proper repair manual would include potential hazards and their mitigation processes as part of the repair procedure.
The problem is idiots with no common sense but huge egos. They will claim that it is the manufacturers fault when they, for example, work on an electric stove without pulling the breakers first, or if they put their flat under water because they re-used one-time use gaskets on a water line. And they will still claim that if all the mistakes they made were clearly described as something to avoid in the manual. There are unfortunately quite a few of these people and the only way to prevent them from screwing
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for example, work on an electric stove without pulling the breakers first,
What the actual fuck, man!?!
We can't make the world safe for the terminally stupid!
Re:Liability (Score:4)
But why are you presenting that as bad? (Score:2)
Natural selection is key for keeping humanity healthy.
Not even anti-social or inhumane natural selection. Just plain old: If you fuck yourself up because you were careless, then you get the appropriate reward.
Implying it doesn't risk anyone else's well-being, then at the very least, I should have the right to do that, following from me owning my own body.
Plus, with overpopulation being the core cause of most of our global problems, ... :)
The problems start, when people get to demand their rooms to be padded
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The problem with that idea starts when somebody burns down a house and kills a lot of _other_ people that did not actually screw up...
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Arrogance, victim blaming and stupidly in the same package. How efficient of you.
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Be an idiot, post stupid comments? You have nailed these two at least...
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Some people simply shouldn't try to fix things. Even they benefit from right to repair laws since the possibility that people will fix their own or their neighbor's appliances applies a downward pressure on the price of professional repair.
The problem with replacing the compressor is that most people don't have a refrigerant recovery device and wouldn't use one often enough to justify buying one. Of course, coil springs in a car can hurt you quite badly if they slip while you're compressing them.
As for the
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The problem here is common sense, or rather its absence in many people. You cannot make these appliances idiot-proof to repair. For example, I have no problems with electricity and electronics, I will do water as long as I can use regular gaskets not hemp, but I will stay the hell away from gas piping.
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but I will stay the hell away from gas piping.
Teflon tape is your friend. It's just gas under pressure, nothing magical.
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Teflon tape is your friend. It's just gas under pressure, nothing magical.
Teflon is for amateurs, real men use pipe dope. ;)
Seriously though, while you are correct that there isn't anything inherently magical about gas pipe, there are certainly "gotchas" that your average home-gamer likely wouldn't be aware of. And the consequences of screwing it up can be catastrophic. I'm thinking about things like the "new" corrugated metal gas pipe, and how it has to be properly bonded and can't be ran within a couple inches of anything metallic. Easy to overlook, and that's the kind of t
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Not everything is as simple.
I would never suggest you to fix the compressor on a fridge or the spring on a car. If you don't know what you're doing, you could seriously injure or kill yourself or make your entire house or even neighborhood a Superfund site. With the reliance on ever cheaper switching power supplies in appliances, you don't even know where your line voltage could end up within the appliance.
I can't think of a single winter where some jackass doesn't end up burning down their house or evacuating an entire apartment building because they were going to 'fix this themselves'. I've seen a number of people attempt repairs at things they have no understanding of. It's generally funny but it could be dangerous. I've "repaired" stuff myself like a water valve on my washer which apparently runs on mains voltage with bare contacts right behind the panel opening, I could've easily flooded the basement while electrocuting myself.
If a manufacturer is going to require the user to replace "simple" things like water valves, motors, compressors, gas burners, springs etc. they will have to be made a lot more complicated (think how much extra is involved in fully-replaceable server hardware) and thus more costly and repairs will end up costing even more. After all, the manufacturer is liable for the safety of user-replaceable parts.
So dramatic --- "you could seriously injure or kill yourself or make your entire house or even neighborhood a Superfund site."
Really? The entire neighborhood a superfund site? By repairing my fridge? Do explain , and be sure to use small words.
This is a gem --- "I've "repaired" stuff myself like a water valve on my washer which apparently runs on mains voltage with bare contacts right behind the panel opening, I could've easily flooded the basement while electrocuting myself."
Cut the main breaker and cut t
Re: Liability (Score:2)
Oh, pleaze. A "superfund" site? Present-day refrigerant is bad for the environment, but it's absolutely harmless to humans(*)... which is WHY we use it. Worst-case, azetropic refrigerants like R410a leave behind an oily mess that's not at all toxic.
About the only home appliance that could turn your home into a superfund site is a smoke detector... a very, very large pile of them. AFAIK, exactly one tragic mentally ill person in history has actually done it... and it took Americium from *thousands* of smoke
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I would never suggest you to fix the compressor on a fridge or the spring on a car ...
It's a very dramatic story, but the true is that making things difficult to repair will not stop not qualified people of trying to repair them, yet the opposite might make it safer. Any decent engineer knows not to touch things they have no idea about and to first plug off the power cord, or any other critical thing needed for a specific repair.
Personally I like to repair things - it's fun and satisfying to make broken stuff operational again, but I do not touch anything I have no idea about, and even when
Re:Liability (Score:5, Insightful)
And they've been increasingly killing themselves repairing these appliances. Due to increases in regulatory requirements on CFC, manufacturing switched to much dirtier (as far as CO2) and poisonous R-410.
Same goes for power efficiency increases that go along with higher voltages as well as much more complex electronics.
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Due to increases in regulatory requirements on CFC, manufacturing switched to much dirtier (as far as CO2) and poisonous R-410.
Not according to wikipedia:
Unlike alkyl halide refrigerants that contain bromine or chlorine, R-410A (which contains only fluorine) does not contribute to ozone depletion, and is therefore becoming more widely used, as ozone-depleting refrigerants like R-22 are phased out. However R410a has a high global warming potential of 2088, higher than that of R-22.[12] Since R-410A allows fo
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Whenever someone assumes that the EU is dumb and doesn't so basic research, you can be sure they are wrong.
They are also usually the same people complaining about how much time and money the EU wastes doing basic research, oddly enough.
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And they've been increasingly killing themselves repairing these appliances.
You can't legislate against stupidity. It's not like the risks aren't known. Look at the building industry. Just off the backs of years of court cases about asbestosis, the mitigation for which is a standard P2 rated mask, and you still see builders happily using circular saws without gloves or glasses, and (back to my point) cutting silica sheets with a diamond blade on their angle grinders without any breathing protection.
It's literally suicide by stupidity.
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Yeah the only risk is to how much excess profit they can make and the only question they have is how much they can screw the customer for...
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They are also working on having products labelled with expected lifespan and the lowest MRBF of all the parts.
There are also discussions about mandatory guarantees for things like online services that the products require to operate.
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Most brands will look at the EU laws and LOL.
Make the Bathtub curve fit EU laws and start saving real money on design.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Once the EU set a limit, everyone is going to design down to that year
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Good luck with that. The EU usually just sets lowest common denominator "guidelines". It's possible, and in this case even likely, for member states to impose even stricter requirements.
The worst thing that could happen is that you design something to last a particular amount of time and suddenly a lagging state eventually comes out with a law that makes you liable for longer than you planned.
And since it's permissible to transport goods throughout Europe without documentation, where do you think all those
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The limit is the statutory minimum 2 year warranty and has been there for a couple of decades now. This isn't a limit, it's a requirement to put the lowest MTBF in the information box that has to be on the box. The information box also has things like the device's efficiency rating and how much it costs to run, and stuff that it device specific like how well vacuum cleaners perform on different surfaces and what their emissions are like.
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Because, people haven't been repairing their own appliances since.....they started selling appliances.
This lame excuse should earn a reward for its lameness. From this lame excuse alone, I think we can expect the spare parts to fix a *designed* failure to cost as much as a new machine.
Sorry but when it comes to Millennials they have a point. Everyone in my generation, the one before, knew how to wire a mains plug, millennials don't have a clue. Sure yeah I'm quite sure that eventually they could but when it comes to things like fridges there's some real nasty gas in there that needs to be dealt with properly and I doubt they're even aware of that.
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Because, people haven't been repairing their own appliances since.....they started selling appliances.
It is a lame excuse but legitimate none the less. Liability is what drove laws in many parts of the world to either restrict, certify or outright ban such repairs. It is the reason consumers aren't in charge of the roadworthyness of their cars in most of the world. It is the reason consumers in Australia aren't allowed to touch 230V wiring without a license.
The liability gets worse with on-selling. An unqualified person "repairs" something incorrectly, onsells it and the next person's house burns down. Who
phone batteries (Score:5, Interesting)
But that is included! (Score:2)
If we imply that "appliances" means devices too.
And having to offer easy servicability and spare parts includes enabling replacing parts and offering batteries too.
The only problems are "only professionals", and no spare parts from third parties.
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Batteries are already replacable for practically all phones. Even the iPhones, a battery re-placement can cost as little as $20 and be done in about 10 minutes. If you want a battery that's guaranteed to be a quality battery and not "Samsung Galaxy Note 7 style" it can cost more, maybe $30-50.
OK, maybe they won't be available for 10 full years, but even I have a hard time justifying that, having just replaced my iPhone 4S last year.
Plus,
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businesses that can change your battery will often do it for about $5 more, or free even.
Nothing is "free"
No exceptions.
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Apparently, it would. I am still not going to buy a main phone that does not have an easy to replace battery. I consider a phone with a non-replaceable battery defective by design.
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Would it kill them to include replaceable phone batteries in the list?
Consumer electronics in general aren't in the list. They are targeting white goods.
They are already available (Score:5, Informative)
2. The manufacturers have been preparing for it. Over the last 3-5 years the domestic appliances in the Eu have become more repairable, not less in line with the spare parts being more easily avaialble. Try to replace a door gasket or disassemble an old Bosch dishwasher or god forbid an AEG one. Try the same with a model from the last few years. The difference is quite substantial.
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1. The manufacturers are already selling the spares. You can find a spare for nearly anything and everything on espares.co.uk
Nope. You can find spares, but in many cases they are nothing to do with manufacturers. Sure reputable manufacturers who have built their brand on the basis of longevity make spares available. But that is far from universal.
2. The manufacturers have been preparing for it. Over the last 3-5 years the domestic appliances in the Eu have become more repairable
Just to be clear manufacturers have been *reverting* to their previous practice after many years of a downhill trend. But they are far from where they were 30 years ago.
OH YES PLEASE! (Score:2)
I'll have what Europe's having!
automakers take note (Score:2)
Manufacturers say they are only making the parts available for independent professionals because if consumers were allowed to buy spares and mend their own machines it would raise questions about risk and liability.
You're at risk for being liable for including a spare tire in the trunk, because some idiot could forget to tighten down the lug nuts, or not properly use the jack.
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They do not teach that in driving school these days anymore?
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Maybe. It's just an example of the kind of liability laws that could be used as a cough-out for manufacturers not supplying any replacement parts for what should servicable and durable goods.
I guess to take the car analogy further, what if auto makers used the excuse of "risk and liability" for not allowing you to purchase parts. That'd be insanely stupid as well.
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I see your point.
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Yes, that's rule 1 if you're a complete fuckwit.
You forgot rule 2: blame the EU for absolutely everything no matter how stupid.
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pipe dreams for us in the US (Score:2)
Continuation Engineering (Score:1)
At some companies it is called continuation engineering. A team comes on the scene to engage in cost reduction. If the contacts on the relay are made of silver and last 14 years, they innovate with lower cost materials, because the appliance the relay goes in only has an eight year warranty.
Repair? (Score:2)
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Brexiteers will .... (Score:1)
Brexiteers will still spin this as project fear and prove they are all idiots.
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Brexiteers will still spin this as project fear and prove they are all idiots.
Well if you wanted to prove remainers aren't the brightest bulbs in the pack you've achieved it brilliantly with that post.
Ignoring the facts again ... (Score:2)
Very Dunning Kruger of you to ignore the facts even after two years of trying to knock some common sense into you leavers you still revel in ignorance.
Fact: most graduates voted to remain.
Fact: most winners (AB demographics) voted remain.
Fact: most idiots voted to leave.
Fact: most losers (DE demographic) voted leave.
All proven facts: https://lordashcroftpolls.com/... [lordashcroftpolls.com]
Leavers are all turkeys voting for Christmas based on lies; no not the nation, but the poultry; but not the sort of poultry that is soaked in
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This could happen, but I doubt about the price increase. I'm pretty sure that if the manufacturers could sell the appliances for more money, they would have already done so ("whatever the market will bear").
Making it physically almost impossible to repair would probably cost more money to manufacture too. Also, there is a chance that not everybody will do this.
For example, when I look for a new laptop (or help someone else choose one), I stay away from those that use "smart" power supplies. Even if the spec
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I'd rather buy a laptop that uses a power supply that is just that, a power supply, since then I would be able to use any power supply with the laptop, as long as it provides the correct voltage and current and has the correct connector.
The main reason Apple batteries and other premium makes last as well as they do in their laptops (mine is on 82 charge cycles and 84% capacity left in my 2015 MBP) is because of smart chargers. By all means have a dumb charger but then expect to be replacing batteries every 12-18 month, spending muuuch more than the cost of a genuine replacement charger as well as contributing to landfill as very few companies recycle lithium batteries as it isn't economically viable.
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Charge controller circuit should be in the laptop, near the battery and not in the power supply. The power supply should take 220V AC (or 12V DC) and convert it to whatever voltage is appropriate to the internal voltage regulators of the laptop.
Then I do not need special power supply to use the laptop in a car etc.
Just like a cellphone - it takes +5V from the power supply and charges the battery using the internal charge controller.