Slashdot Mirror

Let me first state which parts of your post I am refuting. There are 2:

If a belt breaks, they can require you get it repaired at a dealer if you want warranty coverage.

They cannot require it. But they don't have to pay for it if you use a 3rd-party vendor.

if they want to say your engine warranty is voided if you hang fuzzy dice on the mirror, they can. They just have to state so clearly.

They can only do this if they first prove to the FTC that doing so would harm the product. Then, if the customer sues, it goes to the courts. After reading today, it seems that there is some kind of arbitration process. I don't know how that works though.

Understanding the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act
Emphasis mine:

"Tie-In Sales" Provisions
Generally, tie-in sales provisions are not allowed. Such a provision would require a purchaser of the warranted product to buy an item or service from a particular company to use with the warranted product in order to be eligible to receive a remedy under the warranty. The following are examples of prohibited tie-in sales provisions.

In order to keep your new Plenum Brand Vacuum Cleaner warranty in effect, you must use genuine Plenum Brand Filter Bags. Failure to have scheduled maintenance performed, at your expense, by the Great American Maintenance Company, Inc., voids this warranty.

While you cannot use a tie-in sales provision, your warranty need not cover use of replacement parts, repairs, or maintenance that is inappropriate for your product. The following is an example of a permissible provision that excludes coverage of such things.

While necessary maintenance or repairs on your AudioMundo Stereo System can be performed by any company, we recommend that you use only authorized AudioMundo dealers. Improper or incorrectly performed maintenance or repair voids this warranty.

Although tie-in sales provisions generally are not allowed, you can include such a provision in your warranty if you can demonstrate to the satisfaction of the FTC that your product will not work properly without a specified item or service. If you believe that this is the case, you should contact the warranty staff of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection for information on how to apply for a waiver of the tie-in sales prohibition.

You do have a point. However they did explicitly state the terms of their warranty and make it available prior to the sale. It appears that they satisfied the MMWA by disclosing the conditions that will void the warranty.

I did find this Understanding the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act in a Google search.

I would hope that the Magnuson Moss Act of 1975 would help protect consumers from this sort of behavior. One of the provisions of the MM Act was to protect customers from "Tie-in Sales". A "tie-in" was where a company or seller would force the buyer of a warranted item to buy products or services from a particular vendor otherwise it voided their product warranty. This would be like Ford Motor Company telling anyone that buys a Ford vehicle that they could only use Motorcraft brand lubrication products in their vehicle otherwise it would void their warranty.

Understanding the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act

OK, here's the citation. The law that makes this ILLEGAL is the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act.

Here is an overview.

Here is the relevant section:
"Tie-In Sales" Provisions
Generally, tie-in sales provisions are not allowed. Such a provision would require a purchaser of the warranted product to buy an item or service from a particular company to use with the warranted product in order to be eligible to receive a remedy under the warranty. ... later...
Although tie-in sales provisions generally are not allowed, you can include such a provision in your warranty if you can demonstrate to the satisfaction of the FTC that your product will not work properly without a specified item or service.

Now, that being said, there's nothing to keep the companies from trying to tie warranty to their own supplies. Most consumers are sheep and will believe the "customer service" droid at the end of the 1-800 line when the droid says "your warranty is void because you didn't buy Barfco toner carts."

So the tie-in might work by default. The company will just get its pee-pee slapped by the FTC or a state attorney general if they get called out. But that may take years, and we all know that business milestones are measured in weeks. That's plenty of time for the marketing VP to gather his bonus and promotion and leave the aftermath of anti-competitive and illegal warranty policies to the customer-service VP that he personally doesn't like, anyways.

(It's not everyday that a bright executive gets to garner laurels and financial rewards for a bright idea that simultaneously torpedoes a competing executive in a different department of the same company. Gotta push down to rise up, right?)

Generally, tie-in sales provisions are not allowed. Such a provision would require a purchaser of the warranted product to buy an item or service from a particular company to use with the warranted product in order to be eligible to receive a remedy under the warranty. The following are examples of prohibited tie-in sales provisions.

Its full name is the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act and yes, a manufacturer cannot make a "tie-in" requirement that purchasing a part from someone else voids your warranty. You could argue that adding someone else's ink is no different than adding someone else's carbur^H carbo^H transmission, for example.

Can you imagine purchasing a car and not being allowed to install a turbo, or better exhaust...or modifying it to run on fryer oil?

Check out full explanation here

I believe the Magnuson-Moss Warranty act allows for the purchase of accessories like mod chips:

" Tie-In Sales Provisions:
Generally, tie-in sales provisions are not allowed. Such a provision would require a purchaser of the warranted product to buy an item or service from a particular company to use with the warranted product in order to be eligible to receive a remedy under the warranty. The following are examples of prohibited tie-in sales provisions.

In order to keep your new Plenum Brand Vacuum Cleaner warranty in effect, you must use genuine Plenum Brand Filter Bags. Failure to have scheduled maintenance performed, at your expense, by the Great American Maintenance Company, Inc., voids this warranty.

While you cannot use a tie-in sales provision, your warranty need not cover use of replacement parts, repairs, or maintenance that is inappropriate for your product. The following is an example of a permissible provision that excludes coverage of such things.

While necessary maintenance or repairs on your AudioMundo Stereo System can be performed by any company, we recommend that you use only authorized AudioMundo dealers. Improper or incorrectly performed maintenance or repair voids this warranty."

It is my understanding of this act that no accessories manufacturer is required to get permission from the original manufacturer before producing the add-in parts.

Manguson-Moss also allows for "unintended use"...that means you can buy a hammer and use it as a paper weight if you like (as long as using it as a paper weight does not result in the destruction of the hammer). So Microsoft can not prohibit you from running other software on your Xbox.

How did Microsoft pull this off? MS must have better attorneys.

-ted

This is only enforceable if the manufacturer supplies the ink for free (except in the unlikely event the service provider can prove the third party ink caused the damage (i.e. using refills ipso facto isn't considered to have caused the printer to fail). See the Magnasun-Moss Warranty Act, a law written to prevent these kind of abuses (at the time by automobile dealers).

Of course, this would require someone to bitch really loud and/or take a printer manufacturer to court, which would be a big hassle. My plan would be to sue the warranty service provider that refused on those grounds in small claims.