> Now an old fashioned light bulb shouldn't be expected to last a decade, but an oven?
Funnily enough, there actually was the Phoebus cartel [1] which sought to reduce the lifespan of incandescent light bulbs to around 1,000 hours and raise prices.
I recall reading a quasi-debunking of this. I didn't go down the rabbit hole far enough to understand all the details, but it seems the situation was more complicated than just corporate greed. [1]
The topic has been discussed here in the past a few times, including [2] and [3]
I would not call any of that a debunking, even quasi. Just a different dance around the same hard-to-swallow pill.
Company X makes a great product that everyone only needs one of and lasts a long time. Over time, the market starts to dwindle and. Company X is going broke. Now, Company X must either invest in innovation or reduce the lifespan of its current offering.
There's nothing inherently evil about this concept, but we tend to want to chalk it up to greed when Company X really just wants to survive and make a profit, which I suppose is the point.
The problem is the concept is ripe for abuse. If Company X makes their product worse, but starts charging more while laying off employees, posting record profits during recessions, adopts unnecessary subscription models cosplaying as continued service and development, etc...now we get to the greed part. There seems to be a line between designing a product to secure the longevity of Company X and straight up using your customers as micro-transaction ATMs with planned obsolescence. Some companies conspire to cross it.
Nice video from the well known channel Technology Connections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY
=> It's complicated. Yes, there was a cartel, but it was not all bad. There were legitimate reasons to go for 1000h light bulbs.
>but it seems the situation was more complicated than just corporate greed
Then their strategy worked - if you really believe it's more complicated. Haven't investigated this particular subject, but many others subjects are _made_ complicated to achieve a particular outcome. Along lines of: 'let's protect the children' argument.
I'm convinced this happened recently with LED bulbs as well, even though I've found no definitive proof. The LEDs I installed in my house 10-12 years ago are still going strong, but every newer one I've purchased gives up the ghost within a couple of years. And I only purchase brands with a good reputation, like Feit and the like.
The rule of thumb I've found with light bulbs is similar to the Boots Theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory), which is you need to spend at least $8-$10 on a bulb to get something that will actually last. Feit is good but its hit or miss on life span, especially when I get them close to the same price and incandescent, often times its the little A/C to DC converter that dies (really need DC light circuits or dedicated converter in the light fixture). I feel its worth spending the extra to not replace them.
- Lower-quality components (especially capacitors) being used to meet the lower price point. This is by far the most common failure mode I have experienced, it's never the LEDs dying but the power supply.
- Higher-quality LED light is usually result of driving the LEDs harder, causing them to fail earlier.
The LEDs themselves are made in a handful of factories around the World and are usually robust. The power supplies are the weakness. Each bulb manufacturer makes their own, and it's a race to the bottom.
At least you have a fighting chance of fixing your LED bulb, unlike an incandescent.
Usually they’re over-driven and you can jump a burned out LED and scrape off a bit of a resistor to reduce the amount of current going through to (over-)account for the reduced current need.
There is definitive proof. They over-drive the LEDs which is why they die so quickly. If they were under-driven they last much much longer. It's the heat that kills them IIRC.
- Incandescent bulbs had to balance factors like light output, efficiency, and lifespan - hotter filaments produced brighter, whiter light but reduced bulb lifespan.
- Longer-lasting bulbs were less efficient and produced dimmer, yellower light, so they were not simply "better" products being suppressed.
- The 1,000 hour target was a reasonable compromise that balanced these competing priorities, not necessarily a sinister plot.
- Even after the Phoebus cartel dissolved, the 1,000 hour lifespan remained the industry standard for general-purpose incandescent bulbs.
You're missing the fact that the Phoebus cartel fined members that sold lightbulbs lasting longer than 1,000 hours. Aftr reaching a stable equilibrium, it's not surprising that 1,000 hours remained the industry standard. It drove sales!
This sounds like classic corporate bamboozlery. Find some real trade off that actually exists and then exaggerate its importance or pretend that no other solutions can be found when in fact they don't want solutions because the problem is profitable.
Undoubtedly there are some alternate materials you could make a light bulb out of that present a trade off between longevity and efficiency. But there will also be materials that last a long time and have high efficiency. Moreover, even if they want to use the filament material that emits whiter light and then burns up faster, they could then use more of it so it still doesn't burn out quickly. But they don't want to do that, because it would cost marginally more and more importantly then you wouldn't have to buy as many light bulbs.
It's no good to pretend this isn't possible. There isn't an inherent trade off between brightness and efficiency, because inefficiency is just the percentage of the electricity that goes to producing heat rather than light. At the same power consumption, a more efficient bulb is brighter. LEDs are rated as "100W equivalent" even though they consume ~20W. And the LEDs themselves last far longer than the equivalent incandescent light, but then they purposely combine them with a power converter that burns out much sooner. It's marketing, not physics.
Well, without the cartel there could have presumably been bright white, 1000 hour bulbs on the shelf next to dim yellow 2500 hour bulbs, and people could have chosen accordingly.
Additionally, the companies set up a whole compliance regime with bulb testing and fines, not for bulbs being too dim, but for bulbs that lasted too long, which I think clarifies the intent more than anything else.
Hotter filament gives more efficient and whiter light (the black body radiation has more visible and less infrared), but the hotter filament doesn't last as long (faster evaporation rate).
It's perfectly possible for end users to use a dimmer switch to make incandescent lamps last much, much longer at the expense of less light and a "warmer" colour.
Lifespan is very, very sensitive to the temperature.
i guess a lot of lights will work a lot longer if powered at such low voltage and not switched on/off like most ppl do, but this would reduce a lot nr of cases where such a light can be used
It barely glows. The "lightbulb cartel" was basically a consumer protection because barring major inventions, any deviation from the thousand hour lightbulb would have severe drawbacks in terms of power efficiency or light output.
LED diodes can theoretically last decades given the correct drivers (current and heat needs to be significantly limited), unfortunately they are the very definition of planned obsolescence.
> "A longer life bulb of a given wattage puts out less light (and proportionally more heat) than a shorter life bulb of the same wattage"
As long as we can recycle (or at least safely get rid of) the burned out ones I'd say its a win from ecology perspective, and at least in some cases also for end users. But this wasnt the main driver of the change, it was the good ol' corporate greed as per the same wiki page.
We've got a similar thing in New Zealand: the Consumer Guarantees Act.
The people who sold the broken thing to you can either fix it, replace it, or refund you the cost of it. The decision is unfortunately up to them, so they sadly often replace things rather than fixing them.
Consumer NZ is usually used as the independent source for expected product lifetimes: https://www.consumer.org.nz/articles/appliance-life-expectan.... Interestingly, they specify 15 years for an oven, which is more than the company in this article claimed electric ovens should last for.
15 years seems darn short for an oven. The (electric) one I have now is from the late 1960's, and perfectly functional. At church, our (gas) kitchen oven is about a century old - and the last service man we had said that it should be good for another century, if we're careful not to let it rust out.
When I lived in Hongkong, my oven failed after less than 10 years. When my landlord came to replace it, he told me that it was common due to the extreme humidity that eventually ruins the circuit boards. I'm still a bit skeptical of that explanation -- but he has probably replaced more "white goods" (refrig, oven, etc.) that I will in a lifetime. Weirdly, my washing machine by Bosch was tough as nails and never had any issues. One would assume that it would be similarly affected by the humidity.
I wonder if this takes into account all the cheap crap installed in apartments/for-rent units. Those seem to last closer to 10 years depending on abuse and quality (usually just getting scraped up, cosmetically damaged).
It seems like those Samsung/LG smart appliances are constantly breaking (especially fridges)
Really it seems anything with a circuit board is more likely to break (which I suppose is somewhat intuitive given mechanical parts are fairly durable)
If you are willing to offer an extended warranty for X years, then that's pretty good evidence that I should be covered by the CGA for at least that long.
In a way, Aus and NZ are taking advantage of other countries’ paltry consumer protection laws. I’m sure manufacturers have not priced in the cost of handling consumers in those countries who use those protections. If they ever do, you can bet they’ll spread the cost to all territories.
It’s silly that the US doesn’t set up similar protections. While manufacturers race to the bottom, we (consumers) could race to the top.
I bought a cool wifi, internet connected picture frame from a thrift store. It had someone else's pictures on it, so I went into the menu and selected "Factory Reset"
After that it never booted past the setup pages with a "unable to get token" message. I messaged the company who was very responsive but the end result was that they said it was unfixable and to return it to the store.
It was only $8, but I was looking forward to a wifi connected picture frame.
At a certain point we have to stop describing these situations as you "owning" something which broke, and instead describe it as you leasing the picture frame from that company for $0 (with an initial upfront cost) and the company failing to holdup on it's side of the deal.
MHBKD recently made a video on Apple testing lab [1], and one thing he talked about and that was kinda new to me is seeing repairability as a spectrum. I.e. on one side is "indestructible" product and on the other is "perfectly repairable". And that those properties (being hard to damage/destruct and being easy to repair) might be mutually exclusive.
In a hindsight it seems obvious, still this video was the first time I've heard this verbalized so clearly.
Disclaimer: I haven't seen the video (I'm in a quiet place right now.)
> And that those properties (being hard to damage/destruct and being easy to repair) might be mutually exclusive.
I disagree on a fundamental level.
You could say such a thing when talking about really small (micro/miniature) devices. But as size increases, the validity of such arguments rapidly goes down. A phone case/bumper for example - makes the device larger, yes - but increases strength while not hurting reparability.
The "problem", imo, is two-fold:
1. Apple does not care too much about making repairs easy. If it costs $100 to make a board they can charge a customer $500 to repair, or $800 for a new phone, it's easy for them.
2. (Some) people prefer sleeker designs. Samsung has its active range of phones, CAT makes durable phones - but many prefer a smaller thickness/bezel etc. This means that when tech improves to make smaller bezels, manufacturers decrease the bezel a little and add protective padding a little... haha no. It's only bezel reduction. Because it sell, I suppose.
For example gorilla glass/protective glass has improved in technology, but thinner screens (for thinner devices) have eaten up the benefits of stronger tech.
The real "killer" argument? The presence of companies like Framework. I'm typing this out on my FW13 & its build quality is really good. Perhaps a 10 year old thinkpad may be similar or better, but this is almost certainly thinner. But it is almost definitely more repairable.
It's possible, but requires companies to offer products, and people to use and buy them.
There would not be an issue for Apple or Samsung to design a backplane that uses screws to hold the phone together, eliminating the need for glue entirely.
> For example gorilla glass/protective glass has improved in technology, but thinner screens (for thinner devices) have eaten up the benefits of stronger tech.
This is an interesting point. I didn't think about it, but it makes sense. Are there any "chonky" mobile phones with very thick cases & screens... like the Panasonic ToughBook?
In France, the "Repairability Index" was mandatory since 2021 [1, in French], and will be superseded by the "Durability Index" starting on 2025 [2, in French]
Is the idea of these indices to encourage buyers to choose more repairable / durable goods? I can remember shopping for a new fridge with my parents as a kid: The energy efficiency labels (mandated by the gov't) made a big difference on their purchasing decisions.
I have a Rainforest Automation Eagle 200 radio box that pairs with a PG&E meter to enable real time data egress. The onboard software is brittle and the device fails to boot up completely, though it is responsive to local network requests.
Rainforest Automation is uninterested in debugging it and is offering only a discount on replacement hardware. But this is likely a software problem (I suspect failed certificate rotation to connect to their backend) and I don't want to give them more money.
I live in California and the right to repair goes live next month. Anybody know how I can use that right to actually get a repair?
I would presume it's not retroactive, and would only apply to devices sold after the law went into effect. And perhaps only even devices manufactured before then.
Manufacturers must also make available documentation, parts, and tools for at least three years after the product was last manufactured for products priced between $50 and $99.99 and for at least seven years after the product was last manufactured for products priced at $100 or more, regardless of any warranty periods.
The law broadly covers electronic and appliance products, including cell phones, laptops, tablets, and various home appliances, that were manufactured and sold or used for the first time in California on or after July 1, 2021.
I've got a friend who claims to have sued dozens of companies in the equivalent in the UK; he called it "Small Claims Court", but perhaps it has a more specific technical name. Here's an example:
I don't think the courts really matter, what does matter are the legal guarantees. In the EU it is an explicit two years, so I think a situation like this, where a 9 year old appliances is being repaired under threat of legal action, simply won't arise as the customer has no legal basis for his claim.
2 years is the EU-wide minimum, individual countries can raise that bar. The Netherlands for example has the same reasonable expectation rule as discussed in the article. You absolutely will win a similar court case here (I know people who've done it).
A not often discussed problem with the EU guarantee is that in the first 6 months, every defect is presumed to have been present at the time it was bought. After 6 months it is on the consumer to prove it, and for most things it is just not worth it to pay for an expert opinion.
So in practice the iron clad guarantee is only 6 months for most consumer
products.
At least that's the interpretation of the law in the UK.
edit: small claims courts are quite accessible in the UK, so often the threat of small claims can get thing moving.
I mean, there are normal consumer protection rules. But it's actually commonplace for a lot of appliances at least in Germany and Japan to have a 10 year operational guarantee. I don't really how you can enforce it in either place, but it does seem to me that at least the big traditional companies to stick to these periods for bigger appliances such as air conditioning, fridges, washing machines etc. Interestingly for smaller more modern devices, like say, a table top dishwasher, you're lucky if these things last a year and you'll have a hard time enforcing the 2 year warranty even with the help of the consumer protection agency.
I don't know about Sweden particularly but in Norway "Forbrukerkjøpsloven" [0] gives you up to a 5 year warranty on any items which are obviously meant to last for at least that long. For instance, shoes have a two years warranty, but a laptop or most kitchen appliances have an automatic 5 year warranty which cannot be waived.
I'm not that knowledgeable about all the details here, but I've done it once for a PSU which stopped working after four years.
5 years feels pretty long for a laptop warranty to be honest. (I'm typing this on a 2019 Intel MBPro, but it's getting pretty long in the tooth, and if it had died already or last year, I would not have felt like I got an unreasonably short lifespan out of it.)
Do I expect a laptop to last 5 year? Yes, most of them. Do I think it's inherently problematic or that consumers were "cheated" if say 25% of laptops only last 4 years instead of 5? I do not.
I don't think it's actually what you meant to ask (I think you are actually interested in legally mandated warranties rather than the courts where they're enforced) but I think most countries have something equivalent to "small claims court" to make low-stakes suits viable.
I have successfully used exactly the same technique of "get a court date, wait for your opponent to contact you and resolve the issue, cancel the court date" in the past to challenge an illegal rent increase in Switzerland. The court for that here is called the Schlichtungsbehörde.
It seems like we have 2 year legally enforced warranty (which I knew about), and some sort of small claims court (which I did not know about).
I think I would have heard about legally mandated warranties that extended beyond the 2 years I knew about. The Australian system seems quite reasonable, I wonder why we don't have something like that? 2 years for everything seems pretty weird.
In the EU there are 2 years warranty for pretty much anything (not services), so the reverse bathtub descent is bit more than that.
As for courts - there is a customer protection commission/service in most (all) EU member states. However, they won't do anything if the item is out of legal claim for 'free' (any) repairs.
My personal issue is not the warranty/courts, though. While I can repair all kinds of stuff (from laptops board repair to gas lawn mowers), the fact you get a piece of junk that serves no purpose until repaired, is damning. A story may make a decent material for a blog post, but in real life you generally don't have luxury to pursue a slow process for repair/replacement, if it's an important piece of equipment.
It's kinda same here in Thailand; with much more bureaucrat issue though.
Although we didn't explicitly have a consumer court, we have a court department in both municipal and Provincial Courts. (ศาลจังหวัด/ศาลแขวง... แผนกคดีผู้บริโภค)
People can file a complaint themselves both in-person or via e-Filing system. Although very tedious to do so, at least in my opinion, it still workable.
Same as the blog's author, any plaintiff I've help with, need some patient and times on both evidence collecting and consulting with the court's appointed lawyer to draft the complaint. But, for the case against big company at least, it mostly worked out for them.
Check Swedish law; there are no EU-wide laws like the Australian one, but some member states di have extra laws similar to the Australian one. I don't know about Sweden specifically.
The law in the UK is a bit more complex than that. It has to be of what used to be called merchantable quality (they changed the term I think) which means that if something breaks because of something like a manufacturing flaw or design defect you are covered for the reasonable life of the product (so could be a very long time for something like an oven).
This is old law (common law, although now redefined in legislation). EU law added some protections on top of this, and non-EU UK law added more. I am not up to date with the details, but there are plenty of readable guides out there to anyone who needs them.
Similar law in the UK. There is also trading standards who can sometimes help but the small claims court is fairly straight forward. On top of that if you pay with a credit card or any other form of credit specific to that purchase (e.g. a car loan) you also have a claim against the credit provider.
Don't usually need to even go to court anymore as there is a mediation step offered before court. I did this to get a refund for a smartphone that stopped working after a couple of years.
Readit News
Funnily enough, there actually was the Phoebus cartel [1] which sought to reduce the lifespan of incandescent light bulbs to around 1,000 hours and raise prices.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
The topic has been discussed here in the past a few times, including [2] and [3]
1: https://readmedium.com/en/the-phoebus-cartel-was-never-reall...
2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21596792
3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17606748
Company X makes a great product that everyone only needs one of and lasts a long time. Over time, the market starts to dwindle and. Company X is going broke. Now, Company X must either invest in innovation or reduce the lifespan of its current offering.
There's nothing inherently evil about this concept, but we tend to want to chalk it up to greed when Company X really just wants to survive and make a profit, which I suppose is the point.
The problem is the concept is ripe for abuse. If Company X makes their product worse, but starts charging more while laying off employees, posting record profits during recessions, adopts unnecessary subscription models cosplaying as continued service and development, etc...now we get to the greed part. There seems to be a line between designing a product to secure the longevity of Company X and straight up using your customers as micro-transaction ATMs with planned obsolescence. Some companies conspire to cross it.
Then their strategy worked - if you really believe it's more complicated. Haven't investigated this particular subject, but many others subjects are _made_ complicated to achieve a particular outcome. Along lines of: 'let's protect the children' argument.
- Lower-quality components (especially capacitors) being used to meet the lower price point. This is by far the most common failure mode I have experienced, it's never the LEDs dying but the power supply.
- Higher-quality LED light is usually result of driving the LEDs harder, causing them to fail earlier.
- Probably some other reasons too.
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-royal-li...
Only shows you bulbs can be made well and last long. But those are not for you. (Assuming most readers here are not Saudi)
Usually they’re over-driven and you can jump a burned out LED and scrape off a bit of a resistor to reduce the amount of current going through to (over-)account for the reduced current need.
https://youtu.be/JBKF7rKB3zc
Key points from an AI summary:
- Incandescent bulbs had to balance factors like light output, efficiency, and lifespan - hotter filaments produced brighter, whiter light but reduced bulb lifespan.
- Longer-lasting bulbs were less efficient and produced dimmer, yellower light, so they were not simply "better" products being suppressed.
- The 1,000 hour target was a reasonable compromise that balanced these competing priorities, not necessarily a sinister plot.
- Even after the Phoebus cartel dissolved, the 1,000 hour lifespan remained the industry standard for general-purpose incandescent bulbs.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-04/cheeri...
Undoubtedly there are some alternate materials you could make a light bulb out of that present a trade off between longevity and efficiency. But there will also be materials that last a long time and have high efficiency. Moreover, even if they want to use the filament material that emits whiter light and then burns up faster, they could then use more of it so it still doesn't burn out quickly. But they don't want to do that, because it would cost marginally more and more importantly then you wouldn't have to buy as many light bulbs.
It's no good to pretend this isn't possible. There isn't an inherent trade off between brightness and efficiency, because inefficiency is just the percentage of the electricity that goes to producing heat rather than light. At the same power consumption, a more efficient bulb is brighter. LEDs are rated as "100W equivalent" even though they consume ~20W. And the LEDs themselves last far longer than the equivalent incandescent light, but then they purposely combine them with a power converter that burns out much sooner. It's marketing, not physics.
Additionally, the companies set up a whole compliance regime with bulb testing and fines, not for bulbs being too dim, but for bulbs that lasted too long, which I think clarifies the intent more than anything else.
Hotter filament gives more efficient and whiter light (the black body radiation has more visible and less infrared), but the hotter filament doesn't last as long (faster evaporation rate).
It's perfectly possible for end users to use a dimmer switch to make incandescent lamps last much, much longer at the expense of less light and a "warmer" colour.
Lifespan is very, very sensitive to the temperature.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light
The 1000 hours limit is in practice a lower bound to a combination of luminosity and efficiency
https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-l-e-d-quanda...
A stable DC current and temperature limited LED can easily last decades.
> "A longer life bulb of a given wattage puts out less light (and proportionally more heat) than a shorter life bulb of the same wattage"
As long as we can recycle (or at least safely get rid of) the burned out ones I'd say its a win from ecology perspective, and at least in some cases also for end users. But this wasnt the main driver of the change, it was the good ol' corporate greed as per the same wiki page.
http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html
I know this is a common pop-history thing to cite on the Internet, but I would think hackernews would understand the benefits of standardization.
If every brand's lightbulb has different luminousities how on earth would architects decide how to space fixtures?
This "cartel" is how we avoided a dimness war, like the loudness war we had in digital music a decade or so back
Consumer NZ is usually used as the independent source for expected product lifetimes: https://www.consumer.org.nz/articles/appliance-life-expectan.... Interestingly, they specify 15 years for an oven, which is more than the company in this article claimed electric ovens should last for.
It seems like those Samsung/LG smart appliances are constantly breaking (especially fridges)
Really it seems anything with a circuit board is more likely to break (which I suppose is somewhat intuitive given mechanical parts are fairly durable)
Who gets to decide how long something gets to last for?
No, I wouldn’t like the extended warranty thanks - I’m covered already.
It’s silly that the US doesn’t set up similar protections. While manufacturers race to the bottom, we (consumers) could race to the top.
Some companies like Apple try to make up for this by replacing broken devices, then refurbishing and reselling the formerly broken device.
After that it never booted past the setup pages with a "unable to get token" message. I messaged the company who was very responsive but the end result was that they said it was unfixable and to return it to the store.
It was only $8, but I was looking forward to a wifi connected picture frame.
In a hindsight it seems obvious, still this video was the first time I've heard this verbalized so clearly.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8reaJG7z-is
> And that those properties (being hard to damage/destruct and being easy to repair) might be mutually exclusive.
I disagree on a fundamental level.
You could say such a thing when talking about really small (micro/miniature) devices. But as size increases, the validity of such arguments rapidly goes down. A phone case/bumper for example - makes the device larger, yes - but increases strength while not hurting reparability.
The "problem", imo, is two-fold: 1. Apple does not care too much about making repairs easy. If it costs $100 to make a board they can charge a customer $500 to repair, or $800 for a new phone, it's easy for them.
2. (Some) people prefer sleeker designs. Samsung has its active range of phones, CAT makes durable phones - but many prefer a smaller thickness/bezel etc. This means that when tech improves to make smaller bezels, manufacturers decrease the bezel a little and add protective padding a little... haha no. It's only bezel reduction. Because it sell, I suppose.
For example gorilla glass/protective glass has improved in technology, but thinner screens (for thinner devices) have eaten up the benefits of stronger tech.
The real "killer" argument? The presence of companies like Framework. I'm typing this out on my FW13 & its build quality is really good. Perhaps a 10 year old thinkpad may be similar or better, but this is almost certainly thinner. But it is almost definitely more repairable.
It's possible, but requires companies to offer products, and people to use and buy them.
They do. iPhone 14 internals was redesigned to be more repairable [0], which extended to pro models with iPhone 15 [1].
[0] https://www.ifixit.com/News/64865/iphone-14-teardown
[1] https://www.ifixit.com/News/82867/iphone-15-teardown-reveals...
There would not be an issue for Apple or Samsung to design a backplane that uses screws to hold the phone together, eliminating the need for glue entirely.
It just looks a bit ugly.
Right )
[1] https://www.ecologie.gouv.fr/indice-reparabilite [2] https://www.ecologie.gouv.fr/indice-durabilite
Plenty of devices are indestructible and repairable, they're just bulky.
Rainforest Automation is uninterested in debugging it and is offering only a discount on replacement hardware. But this is likely a software problem (I suspect failed certificate rotation to connect to their backend) and I don't want to give them more money.
I live in California and the right to repair goes live next month. Anybody know how I can use that right to actually get a repair?
via[0]:
[0] https://www.sidley.com/en/insights/newsupdates/2023/10/calif...edited to add source URL.
FOREVER. Just design them so parts are replaceable and buildable by any third party and provide the documentation.
For me, it's the most interesting with EU/Sweden. We don't have courts like this do we?
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/legal-syste...
The N1 form is to be sent by post[1] and there is also an online version which can be used in some cases[2].
[1]: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65eb13af62ff4...
[2]: https://www1.moneyclaims.service.gov.uk/eligibility
So in practice the iron clad guarantee is only 6 months for most consumer products.
At least that's the interpretation of the law in the UK.
edit: small claims courts are quite accessible in the UK, so often the threat of small claims can get thing moving.
https://e-justice.europa.eu/42/EN/small_claims?SWEDEN&member...
This link also contains a reference for all other EU member states
I'm not that knowledgeable about all the details here, but I've done it once for a PSU which stopped working after four years.
[0] https://www.forbrukerradet.no/cause-for-complaint/
Do I expect a laptop to last 5 year? Yes, most of them. Do I think it's inherently problematic or that consumers were "cheated" if say 25% of laptops only last 4 years instead of 5? I do not.
I have successfully used exactly the same technique of "get a court date, wait for your opponent to contact you and resolve the issue, cancel the court date" in the past to challenge an illegal rent increase in Switzerland. The court for that here is called the Schlichtungsbehörde.
It seems like we have 2 year legally enforced warranty (which I knew about), and some sort of small claims court (which I did not know about).
I think I would have heard about legally mandated warranties that extended beyond the 2 years I knew about. The Australian system seems quite reasonable, I wonder why we don't have something like that? 2 years for everything seems pretty weird.
As for courts - there is a customer protection commission/service in most (all) EU member states. However, they won't do anything if the item is out of legal claim for 'free' (any) repairs.
My personal issue is not the warranty/courts, though. While I can repair all kinds of stuff (from laptops board repair to gas lawn mowers), the fact you get a piece of junk that serves no purpose until repaired, is damning. A story may make a decent material for a blog post, but in real life you generally don't have luxury to pursue a slow process for repair/replacement, if it's an important piece of equipment.
Although we didn't explicitly have a consumer court, we have a court department in both municipal and Provincial Courts. (ศาลจังหวัด/ศาลแขวง... แผนกคดีผู้บริโภค)
People can file a complaint themselves both in-person or via e-Filing system. Although very tedious to do so, at least in my opinion, it still workable.
Same as the blog's author, any plaintiff I've help with, need some patient and times on both evidence collecting and consulting with the court's appointed lawyer to draft the complaint. But, for the case against big company at least, it mostly worked out for them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_small_claims_proced...
This is old law (common law, although now redefined in legislation). EU law added some protections on top of this, and non-EU UK law added more. I am not up to date with the details, but there are plenty of readable guides out there to anyone who needs them.