Tax-Free IT Repairs Proposed For the UK

judgecorp writes "Removing tax from computer repairs could have a real impact on the IT industry's carbon footprint, according to a petition of the UK government. Old computer equipment often ends up in landfill, or in toxic illegal re-cycling centers in developing countries, because users think it is not cost-effective to repair it. Making repairs tax free could be a simple bit of financial engineering to encourage skilled jobs and keep electronics out of the waste stream, says the author of the campaign."

Comments

But it isn't cost effective!

[jawtheshark]

Look, I'm an avid dumpster diver and the only reason I do it, is because I get gear for free and it's fun. However, if you calculate in my time? No, not economic. That 2400+ Athlon XP with 1GB RAM I gave to a coworkers daughter? Cleaning it, assembling good parts from different cadavers, installing Ubuntu and "ready" it for normal usage[1]... This took hours... At my "work" rate, this computer is more expensive than a mid-range new machine which includes real warranty. Now, I *like* doing this and I don't ask a dime if I give away "recovered" machines, but this is in no way economical in the real sense of the word.

Also, if they just talk about "replacing" parts... That's good for RAM or a power supply. Still, you need some time to diagnose the problem which easily exceeds the cost of the parts. Heck if the hard disk fails, you're in a whole crapload of trouble. You lost your OS, your data and most likely the recovery partitions. You ain't getting a working system quickly that way. A dead harddisk is economically the same as a "total loss" for a computer, if you consider the working hours needed to repair it. With cheap netbook and nettop machines, which are most likely better than your older system (even though the Atom is really a weak chip as I can tell from my own experience), comparatively repairs are expensive.

[1] Make sure all media plays, make sure Flash works, make sure Java works, make sure that OpenOffice saves to .doc, .xls etc by default so she doesn't get into confusing problems when she starts to share school works, etc, etc, etc...

Re:Abused

[SimonTheSoundMan]

Retailers abuse the Sales of Goods Act. Products should be made to last a reasonable amount of time, retailers are responsible for 6 years.

Apple were happy to fix my 3 and a half year old iMac for free, Sony fixed my two year old (had a 1 year guarantee) monitor for free. Well, the guys at PC World refused to accept responsibility for a failed motherboard on a 1 year and 1 month old laptop, and wanted to charge me more than I paid for the machine when new just to repair it. Trading Standards told me to go back with a copy of the Sales of Goods Act, PC World promptly fixed it for free. Retailers need to understand this is an unreasonable time for a computer to fail and should repair it, even if out of guarantee, for free.

There should be no reason for tax free repair IMHO. If a machine fails in an unreasonable time, the retailer should fix it. If it is an old machine, the IT company should write it off for tax purposes anyway.

Re:Abused

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Incidentally, if you really want to reduce the number of computers that get tossed due to the above, there are two things that the market needs:

1. More or less idiot-proof backups that occur by default.

2. The requirement that a restore .iso be one of the offerings on the OEM's driver support page for the models they sell/have sold.

Unfortunately, there is no particularly good way to ensure that these conditions exist. #1 would increase(substantially in the case of cheap systems) the base cost of a computer(either up front, as with a time capsule/Windows Home Server thrown in, or over time, as with a Mozy/Carbonite subscription). Plus, if it is bundled by default, people with multiple computers will end up buying way more backup than they need. If it isn't bundled by default, the people who need backups but don't know it yet will just buy the cheaper thing and skip the backup, then cry later. #2 would increase the OEM's bandwidth costs and, rather more serious, probably make MS a sad panda(which would be silly; because pirates can already get stock Windows Whatever Ultimate .isos, and have no interest in OEM restore crap; but they would object anyway).

I see no good way to make these things happen; but they would turn the hours-long slog of cleaning a machine with a borked OS into a "20 minutes of minimally skilled tech time, couple of unattended hours while the backups restore" process, which would make holding on to the hardware much more attractive.