Paralyzed Jockey Loses Ability To Walk After Manufacturer Refuses To Fix Battery For His $100,000 Exoskeleton 56
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: After a horseback riding accident left him paralyzed from the waist down in 2009, former jockey Michael Straight learned to walk again with the help of a $100,000 ReWalk Personal exoskeleton. Earlier this month, that exoskeleton broke because of a malfunctioning piece of wiring in an accompanying watch that makes the exoskeleton work. The manufacturer refused to fix it, saying the machine was now too old to be serviced, and Straight once again couldn't walk anymore. "After 371,091 steps my exoskeleton is being retired after 10 years of unbelievable physical therapy," Straight posted on Facebook on September 16. "The reasons [sic] why it has stopped is a pathetic excuse for a bad company to try and make more money. The reason it stopped is because of a battery in the watch I wear to operate the machine. I called thinking it was no big deal, yet I was told they stopped working on any machine that was 5 years or older. I find it very hard to believe after paying nearly $100,000 for the machine and training that a $20 battery for the watch is the reason I can't walk anymore?"
Straight's experience is a nightmare scenario that highlights what happens when companies decide to stop supporting their products and do not actively support independent repair. It's also what happens without the protection of right to repair legislation that requires manufacturers to make repair parts, guides, and tools available to the general public. Specifically, a connection wire became desoldered from the battery in a watch that connects to the exoskeleton: "It's not the actual battery, but it's the little green connection piece we need to be the right fit and that's been our problem," Straight posted on Facebook. Straight's personal exoskeleton was broken for two months, he said in a video on Facebook. He was eventually able to get the device fixed after attention from an article in the Paulick Report, a website about the horse industry, and a spot on local TV. "It took me two months, and I got no results," he said in the video. With social media and news attention, "it only took you all four days, and look at the results," he said earlier this week while standing in the exoskeleton. "This is the dystopian nightmare that we've kind of entered in, where the manufacturer perspective on products is that their responsibility completely ends when it hands it over to a customer. That's not good enough for a device like this, but it's also the same thing we see up and down with every single product," Nathan Proctor, head of citizen rights group US PIRG's right to repair project told 404 Media. "People need to be able to fix things, there needs to be a plan in place. A $100,000 product you can only use as long as the battery lasts, that's enraging. We should not have to tolerate a society where this happens."
"We have all this technology we release into the wild and it changes people's lives, but there's no long-term thinking. Manufacturers currently have no legal obligation to support the equipment indefinitely and there's no requirements that they publish sufficient documentation to allow others to do it," Proctor said. "We need to set minimum standards for documentation so that, even if a company goes bankrupt or falls off the face of the earth, a technician with sufficient knowledge can fix it."
Straight's experience is a nightmare scenario that highlights what happens when companies decide to stop supporting their products and do not actively support independent repair. It's also what happens without the protection of right to repair legislation that requires manufacturers to make repair parts, guides, and tools available to the general public. Specifically, a connection wire became desoldered from the battery in a watch that connects to the exoskeleton: "It's not the actual battery, but it's the little green connection piece we need to be the right fit and that's been our problem," Straight posted on Facebook. Straight's personal exoskeleton was broken for two months, he said in a video on Facebook. He was eventually able to get the device fixed after attention from an article in the Paulick Report, a website about the horse industry, and a spot on local TV. "It took me two months, and I got no results," he said in the video. With social media and news attention, "it only took you all four days, and look at the results," he said earlier this week while standing in the exoskeleton. "This is the dystopian nightmare that we've kind of entered in, where the manufacturer perspective on products is that their responsibility completely ends when it hands it over to a customer. That's not good enough for a device like this, but it's also the same thing we see up and down with every single product," Nathan Proctor, head of citizen rights group US PIRG's right to repair project told 404 Media. "People need to be able to fix things, there needs to be a plan in place. A $100,000 product you can only use as long as the battery lasts, that's enraging. We should not have to tolerate a society where this happens."
"We have all this technology we release into the wild and it changes people's lives, but there's no long-term thinking. Manufacturers currently have no legal obligation to support the equipment indefinitely and there's no requirements that they publish sufficient documentation to allow others to do it," Proctor said. "We need to set minimum standards for documentation so that, even if a company goes bankrupt or falls off the face of the earth, a technician with sufficient knowledge can fix it."
Break out the iFixit kit (Score:4, Interesting)
We have a new spokesman for right to repair.
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I'm sure he has the right to repair, he bought the equipment and the company doesn't want it back. So go to the mall and get the watch battery replaced.
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He isn't going to have lost it for long IMHO. He should be able to easily get funding from various entities including private citizens.
It's the way to launch a fund raising campaign; make people know and heck, the company could even be in it somehow, with or without his knowledge. The summary sounds awkward.
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There's a photo of the battery in TFA.
It's a standard 3.7v 1.7Ah battery pack.
It's available on Amazon for $10.99 and on Walmart.com for $11.04.
The photo shows the red anode wire is loose, so it might not need a new battery.
A few minutes with a soldering iron might fix the problem.
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The photo shows the red anode wire is loose, so it might not need a new battery.
Noooo! In movies, that's always the wire that detonates the bomb.
Re: Break out the iFixit kit (Score:2)
Pretty Cunniving for the Company (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know the full details, but I bet the company is thinking that his insurance is going to pick up the cost of another exoskeleton and then, ka-ching! I'd bet he can find a reputable repair shop to replace the battery for free as long as they're not held liable for it to work afterward. If the company has programmed the device in a way that a battery change requires them to interact with the watch and enter codes into it, then he's probably got grounds to file suit. The bogus thing is that, during all these, he'd be unable to walk, and that's a sad thing.
Re:Pretty Cunniving for the Company (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know the full details, but I bet the company is thinking that his insurance is going to pick up the cost of another exoskeleton and then, ka-ching!
Pretty much. You have to shame medical device manufacturers before they will change their bordering-on-insurance-fraud policies.
The reality is that the FDA and/or Medicare should have required the devices to have user-replaceable parts at a coarse component level, and required that those parts be backwards compatible with previous generations for at least a couple of decades. They didn't, and of course the manufacturer would rather people throw away a $10k exoskeleton rather than replace the $100 wristband, because that makes them a higher profit margin, so the behavior of the manufacturer is entirely predictable. It all comes down to the insurers and the government not having the foresight to regulate medical devices more competently.
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Or the FDA/Medicare can keep their noses out of it and not require millions of dollars in fees for certifying experimental treatments. Will anyone touch it if it is a 'medical device' - sure, I know at least one company that does that, they start at $800/h with a minimum of 4 hours.
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I think it would be sufficient to require any advertising for the thing to name it's most prominent feature as "this is a piece of crap that will be out of support in 5 years and was sabotaged to not be repairable". Something akin to the warnings on cigarettes. A free market solution (many models of free market assume rational and well-informed customers, and in any case well-informed customers are key to market efficiency).
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free market solution LOL
You think such a specialized need is going to get a good solution from the "free market"? What you get from the free market is exactly what is described here, absurd overcharging and continuous exploitation.
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What I'm saying is uninformed customers cause a failure/inefficiency of the free market.
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In the photo in TFA, it looks like the red wire broke off the battery. Five minutes with a soldering iron and ... fixed. The battery and pigtail look like a replaceable part. Not much different from the AliExpress part I fixed my dash cam with a few months ago.
On the other hand, the battery markings look a bit odd. Polarity markings don't line up with wire colors and there are two different capacity markings on it. Some vendors order custom parts with proprietary part numbers and other markings. Just to ke
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Watt hours = Amp Hours x Volts
Polarity is trivial to check with a multimeter but i would be inclined towards believing the battery, a wire doesn't know what color it is.
Blue Jizz of Death (Score:1)
I was just about to bang the hottest date in town, when my robo-wanker's EULA expired.
(Yes, this is similar to a Big Bang episode.)
This is what the jockey gets for (Score:3, Funny)
...horsing around.
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Pretty sure he wouldn't care, but one can be of good character and still make light of a situation. Maybe you should get off your high horse and worry about your own character? Constantly judging others for petty shit is stupid and a sign of low character in itself.
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Rick is offended! You heard it here, first. Straight from the horse's mouth!
Get your bets in early... (Score:2)
How long until there's a Rossman-Rant up on youtube?
I'm not saying it's a bad thing. It just like his type of red meat to go after.
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He is completely correct in doing so. While I don't really see a need for "requirement that OEM services it indefinitely", requiring service manuals and spare parts be made available on request at a reasonable profit margin should be required in case of things with this kind of cost and importance.
Utterly reprehensible. (Score:2)
time to start suing (Score:3)
I'd start with the difference between what the old exoskeleton is worth and what a new one costs. In the future these companies can work out a support contract for another company to do the work past a certain time frame.
I mean if the auto industry has to keep catalytic converters in a warehouse for decades to support the repair industry then everyone in healthcare can do the same as the bare minimum.
Americans lack the will to change (Score:3)
Both parties in the United States are owned lock, stock and barrel by Corporate America. Corporate America wants you to buy another device, not fix the one you have. In fact, they would prefer that you face legal consequences if you fix the one you have.
This will not change as long as Americans stay fat, sassy and willfully ignorant. Turning up every few years to vote for candidates who have already been selected for them by their corporate masters won't change anything. There is a long, uphill fight ahead if American citizens are ever going to get their country back from the Corporate Parasitocracy.
Re:Americans lack the will to change (Score:5, Informative)
Both parties in the United States are owned lock, stock and barrel by Corporate America. Corporate America wants you to buy another device, not fix the one you have.
California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, and Oregon have all recently passed "right to repair" laws.
All are blue states.
So, at least one party doesn't appear to be owned by corporate America.
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The game is to claim they are so you can justify voting for the one that is more damaging to society.
It's the "no, you are!" defense.
Typical component obsolescense case ? (Score:2)
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Also, 10 years IS a long time for an electronics design. How many devices do you use at home which are that old?
Many [w140.com]. And I can still get tubes for them.
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I have a lot of 10+-year-old electronic devices I still use often. My Roku 2. A Linux PC and a Linux notebook. My electronic piano. My (landline) phones. My DVD player. A Blue Mic Yeti microphone. A bunch of computer monitors.
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To be fair, a lot of electronics will break earlier than that and not because of some evil manufacturer thing, but because capacitors leak, resistors and connections corrode and so on.
It would be nice if service manuals were made available so that skilled individuals could just replace damaged parts. But most electronics with complex boards will generally struggle to go through a decade without something going wrong due to corrosion or ageing.
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In an indoor environment not subject to events like flooding or similar, electronic components like capacitors and resistors last a long time and connections don't corrode easily, unless the components/construction are seriously sub-standard.
I bet the US military has some planes still flying with 1980s-era electronic components. Granted, milspec components are better quality than the regular stuff for civilian use, but still... electronic components are pretty reliable.
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This is because many things are manufactured for an intended lifespan. Intentions can be both good or bad. This introduces economies that everyone may enjoy, as well as opportunities for a large disconnect between the lifespan the consume expects vs the lifespan the manufacturer was going for.
I want my motherboards to last a decade or more. There was a period there not long ago
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10 years IS a long time for an electronics design. How many devices do you use at home which are that old ?
My office digital receiver (really, a DAC that swings so much juice it powers speakers directly) is 20 years old. Daily use 12+ hrs / day. It's sweet as tubes and is a right banger. Listening to Mass in B Minor (Bach, by Robert Shaw Chorale) right now at realistic levels. Yum.
My HT receiver is 9 years old. It sees 2 to 4 hrs a night. The previous one was retired at age 10 because it doesn't have HDMI. A friend has it now, it's his office hi-fi. It's identical to my office receiver. Sees pretty much
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So Tell Us the Fucking Company's Name (Score:2)
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So Tell Us the Fucking Company's Name
It's in the 2nd line of TFS. Says it right there. Right after how much it cost.
10 years? (Score:4, Insightful)
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If it cost $100K, I'd expect it to be serviced for 25+ years.
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If you want 25 years its going to cost a hell of a lot more than $100k
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I said that the thing should be serviced for 25 years. Sure, it might break in less than 25 years, but you should be able to get parts and get it repaired for up to 25 years (which I bet you can with most cars... you can still easily get parts for 1999 model year cars.)
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Right to repair, yes. Right the service, no. We frown on slavery.
I must be missing somethining (Score:2)
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This is a poor poster for right to repair. The picture of a standard lithium cell with a standard JST connector in a case that appears to have been opened without any undue difficulty really hurts its credibility.
But the guy and his story are pitiable, so if wires make you nervous then sure.
lose all patents in it after ending support (Score:2)
anything sold with patents should have those patents voided if support is ended on a product. opening up support to any interested third parties.
that should create incentive for companies to support products they are still profiting on directly or indirectly. or it opens those abandoned products up to the free market.
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what does it mean that something is "sold with patents"? And why should patents be "voided" based on any unrelated activity? Do you even know what a patent is?
Companies can be more directly regulated to solve such problems. For example, requiring such support for products that need it.
Perhaps your house should be burned down if you are late paying your cell phone bill. "that should create incentive" too.
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I don't even believe the story in the first place. Who believes $100K medical devices of which people may depend on for their lives are supported like disposable electronics? Or regulated as such?
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He enjoyed the experimental device for a decade.
Its time to move on.
Already resolved (Score:2)
This became local TV news: https://www.facebook.com/100004871323153/videos/841245831410108/
It appears that the publicity worked, and his device is functional again: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/yMYEJwGPagHynyW1/