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The Only, Lonely Protester at CES (Video)
CES is not a political show, so it only drew one visible protester: Kelly Chong, who is mad at camera manufacturers for (he says) destroying his camera repair business. He managed to get mentioned in Forbes, in an article headlined CES: One Man's Protest Against The World's Camera Makers. And now he's getting three minutes and five seconds of fame on Slashdot. Is his protest justified? According to a 2012 article headlined How Nikon Is Killing Camera Repair, at least one major camera manufacturer now refuses to sell parts to independent repair shops. So Kelly Chong seems to have a legitimate beef. Will anyone listen to him? Will major, multinational camera manufacturers start selling parts to independent repair people again? And what about those of us who do (at least some of) our own repairs? Labor charges aside, it's often lots faster and easier to do a simple repair yourself than to box your camera up and send it somewhere, not to mention the waiting time for it to get back to you.
Back in your place, consumers. You barely even own what you own, much less have any right to fix it or pay someone else to fix it.
The economy of America will collapse unless you keep buying brand new stuff constantly. You don't want that, do you? Are you some kind of terrorist?
As a member of a large professional camera repair society (SPT), I can firmly say: f*** Nikon. Chong's point is entirely valid. Sadly enough, as a photographer, I love Nikon's DSLRs but I can't support them due to their policy towards independent shops.
...on the product in part. In particular, how much service is necessary to keep the device functioning essentially as it did when it was new, and how regular use impacts this.
Remember, a manufacturer, unless obligated by law, does not have to provide anything post-sale unless they've stated that they will. They don't necessarily have to provide parts, warranty, or service unless they've stated that in the sales literature to convince you to buy their product. Granted, depending on the circumstances if they don't give warranties or make repairs possible then their long term sales could suffer if buyers choose other manufacturers due to after-sales support, but that is a choice that they have.
I do understand the complaint, and I even have sympathy, but on the other hand, lots and lots of manufacturers in other fields, especially electronics fields, are doing the same thing. It's hard to buy parts for TVs or other AV electronics. It's even hard to find electronics repair shops that will do out-of-warranty service now, most only handle warranty work.
If manufacturers make quality products that run for a reasonable amount of time (with a different definition of reasonable for each and every market) and handle the rigors of use, then it's hard to make the argument that manufacturers are doing the wrong thing. After all, if a photographer drops his camera and it breaks, that wasn't the manufacturer breaking the camera, and it's likely that with the bigger camera makers, they have ruggedized models that can take that kind of use. But, the manufacturer does not necessarily have to make it easy for the owner to get the broken-out-of-warranty camera fixed either.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Making devices smaller and smaller means a tighter integration of components. Because cameras are getting cheaper and cheaper, It's often less expensive to simply buy a new device than to get it repaired. That being said, the choice there should be the consumer's, not the manufacturers. It really irks me that Apple can get away with preventing people from replacing batteries and upgrading storage so that they can rope the consumer in to having to constantly upgrade. Good for this guy.
Compare this to automobiles. Can you imagine the outrage if you could not buy auto parts? What if you had to go back to the auto manufacturer to have ANY part replaced.
In many cases, it's cheaper to buy a new camera than to have the old one repaired.
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CES is not a political show
Wow. Set off my bullshit detector in the first sentence.
Former President Bill Clinton pushes for stricter gun control during Consumer Electronics Show speech
I suspect we witness here a case of a political view, and even a politician, that is considered so mainstream that they no longer suffer the "political" qualification.
Just for the record, any "show" that has Bill Clinton as a featured speaker is political.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
And what if car companies also took up the same idea. No independent repair shops, and higher prices for all repairs.
I believe that any company that refuses to provide repair parts should then not be allowed to complain if third party companies come along start providing them.
No: this is a completely different issue, it is not about new tech make old tech obsolete. It is as if you could only have your horses shod at a few ''approved'' farriers. Supply & demand would mean that these farriers could charge a lot of money ... but to become approved they need to pay bribes\h\h\h\h\h\h 'approval & training fees' to a central body.
His plight doesn't seem to be with outdated or new and advancing technology, it is with being able to get access to those parts when it fails and he wants to repair them.
That would make your statement more like, if horse upkeep people couldn't get access to starters and alternators or tires, much we'd never have cars either. It doesn't make sense now does it?
Here is the link for the petition, if anyone feels inclined in wasting some time.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Would like to watch when car manufacturers (all at the same time, sure) will start to follow NIKON'S policy.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
To not do so is called abuse of monopoly, it is anti competitive. It pushed up maintainance prices, these prices are, generally, not considered when buying a new camera. Hopefully: in a few years NiKon cameras will have aquired a bad reputation for high maintainace and no one will buy them.
Before anyone says: Nikon do not have a monopoly in selling cameras, they just are trying to get one when it comes to maintaining them - by tying repair shops to them & presumably charging large approval fees.
Remember, a manufacturer, unless obligated by law, does not have to provide anything post-sale unless they've stated that they will.
Would like to watch when car manufacturers (all at the same time, sure) will start to follow NIKON'S policy.
CC.
They already kind of are. You can get more details here, at the Right to Repair coalition:
http://www.righttorepair.org/
Basically, various companies have realized that they can charge dealers exorbitant fees for diagnostic equipment if they make said diagnostics proprietary trade secrets, and then the dealers will have to funnel the costs to the consumer -- which is fine, because the dealers are the only place in town to get the cars repaired at. It's gotten so bad that I've even seen proprietary light bulbs for some vehicles.
Because being a corporation means playing by our societies rules?
at least one major camera manufacturer now refuses to sell parts to independent repair shops. So Kelly Chong seems to have a legitimate beef. Will anyone listen to him?
Probably not. If you build a business based upon the faults of someone else's products, do not be surprised when they decide to handle the problem themselves and put you out of business. If there is money to be made in repairs then you should not be surprised when the manufacturer gets into the repairs business. It's fine to make money on repairing and selling other people's products but if you are a middle man they WILL cut you out if they can.
Which in fact they are trying to do: http://www.righttorepair.org/main/default.aspx
Exactly.
Although, I will add Nikon to my boycott list right now, along with Sony and Microsoft. I will never forget.
Who really needs a TV that will never be moved to be less than an inch thick?
Well, to show that I paid my "taxes" this year and replaced my 3cm thick TV with a 2.4cm one (same screen size).
Since actual innovation is expensive and in some cases slow (TVs are currently limited to HD, because the signal is limited to HD) the manufacturer resorts o changing the appearance of the device so the consumers can throw away the old one and buy new.
We really need to impose a tax on manufacturers to encourage them to design repairability into their products. I suppose availability of service parts would be another input to the formula for this.
Make the manufacturer responsible for recycling the thrown away device and charge an additional tax for that so that it becomes more economical to design the device to last (or be repaired). And extend the mandatory warranty to 5 years for devices that are more expensive than, say, 100EUR...
Car companies don't sell parts to independent repair shops. They sell parts to dealers who then go on to resell them to independent repair shops.
Shoot Pentax. Also, Slashdot -- please blur out Kenny's info on his ID. The last thing that guy needs is identity theft.
If more or all people were so proactive and brave (for a loose definition of bravery, anyway), this in the US would be much better for consumers. For one thing, mobile operators would have saner policies and there would be competition instead of a cartel of internet providers. GM food would be labeled as such and the composition of your food will also be declared (like it is in Europe).
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Which is irrelevant to this discussion as the car parts in question become available to the repair shops just the same. The same does not happen to these camera repair parts.
When we, as a society, give someone or some company exclusivity in manufacturing something, we can expect him to sell it and for reasonable prices. If this entity cannot or doesn't want to sell, society will be better served by taking the monopoly from it.
Braun is doing something related with their shavers. I bought one a few years back, and on the shelf next to it were replacement blades, along with information in the packaging telling me to replace the blades every year. So I bought the blades annually as advised, and one year I start having a horribly uncomfortable shave. Upon further inspection, I discovered their replacement blades (advertised as being correct for my shaver) were no longer of the same geometry, and not sharpened the way previous blades were. So a product that should have lasted 15 years or more was binned after only six years because the replacement parts were substandard. This was a barely visible change, and I suspect a lot of people simply assumed their shavers were "worn out" and needed replacement (by a new $150 model).
To me, this was a completely unethical move. But now I'm trying to figure out how you would propose we deal with this kind of situation. Caveat emptor? Regulations on replacement part availability? Capitalism and competition?
John
The point is, a manufacturer should be obligated by law to provide repair parts for reasonable prices, or, at the very least, let others provide them.
In this case, the word "independent" has a different meaning than it has in any other context: it means that a business isn't certified by a product's manufacturer as competent to service that product. What form that certification takes may vary from one manufacturer to another, but certainly it always costs money; is it an egregious profit-seeking amount, or is it limited to covering the cost of administering the process? That probably varies, too, but you might expect a manufacturer like Nikon to price the certification process quite selfishly. It's not entirely unreasonable for manufacturers to want to protect their own reputation by ensuring that people who attempt to maintain their products in the field are competent to do so. It's also not unreasonable for them to expect to recoup their costs to ensure that (though using it for profiteering would be sleazy).
So ultimately the real beef of people like this fellow is that they either can't afford to cough up what it would cost to maintain the various certifications or simply choose not to do so because it goes against their religion or politics.
Why should any company have to warranty their products for merchantability? Why should any company have to respect that warranty when third party parts are used? Why? Because we decided that it would be in the best interests of society if we forced merchants to stand behind their products. We don't have to live in a disposable culture, and we can use the force of law to prevent it.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Exactly.
Although, I will add Nikon to my boycott list right now, along with Sony and Microsoft. I will never forget.
If I boycotted every company that has wronged, I'd probably be living in a cave dressed in animal skins right now.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Ding. If customers care, they'll buy from different manufacturers. This guy doesn't have a right to those parts.
Customers definitely care. However, the ones likely to care the most are the ones with a significant investment in Nikon format lenses. These lenses don't work with Canon and there may not even be an equivalent for Pentax, Sony, or Olympus.
Although, I will add Nikon to my boycott list right now, along with Sony and Microsoft. I will never forget.
Why just Nikon? He lists Canon and Sony as well. Good luck buying a non-pro but still decent camera while avoiding those three.
But, the manufacturer does not necessarily have to make it easy for the owner to get the broken-out-of-warranty camera fixed either.
There's a difference between making it easy and making it harder to obtain OOW camera repairs. This is Nikon doing the latter. It would appear they're clamping down on the supply chains for replacement parts to only those "authorized repair stations" (read: approved money funnels) to either increase the cost of ownerships for OOW cameras or to make it so difficult to get OOW repairs that you're nearly forced to purchase a new camera.
Also, anyone who says "Nikon doesn't have a monopoly" isn't familiar with the way camera systems work. Nikon, Canon, etc have a pretty strong monopoly on any non-rich photographer who has bought into their lens system over the years. You can't easily jump ship to another manufacturer when you've got 3 years worth of salary sunk into proprietary glass.
The Right to Repair proposals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-repair_act should extend to all consumer products.
If companies had an obligation never to make anyone worse off for every change they made to their business practices, there would be no economic growth. And morally, why does Nixon owe this man who has come to rely on them, anything. They never claimed that replacement parts would always be made available in the future.
Well as I understand it, he was a crook. He should probably be required to resolve this issue before he's allowed to guest-star on Futurama again...
People and companies should be able to sell or not sell to whomever they want. Yes they are doing it because they are trying to make more money. Is that a bad thing? Are the camera companies obligated to prop up a secondary market out of charity? The customers decide if they want to buy a camera from a company that limits repairs to official repair centers (that have whatever customer service, costs they have).
If the customers don't care about the choice to bring their camera to a local repair shop, then there is no point in having them be there. It sucks losing a job, but we can't keep obsolete jobs around just so people never need to learn a new trade. Maybe we need to make it easier to learn new trades or something, but stagnation is just not an option.
If the customers do care about this choice, than any of the major camera companies could theoretically beat their competition by being the only company to provide this choice. If all these companies care about is money then this is exactly what they should do. Customers demand other things like megapixels and portability. Why don't they demand the choice to take their cameras to local repair shops?
Maybe the customers are ignorant about the advantages of this choice? Well then protesting is probably the right thing to do to bring attention to the situation.
I suspect that it is all about money. Not so much unregulated greed, but just about trying to control their products. Some of the local repair shops are probably good, others probably think they are good and actually suck. It is probably just easier for them to have official repair centers where they can control how their products are repaired. When you have official repair centers, there is no question of whether the fault is the repair center or the manufacturer when things go wrong because they are the same. If a repair goes bad in a local shop, the local shop can just blame it on Nikon and say their camera's just suck. Whether true or not, I think that's kind of what the manufacturers don't want. They want to be able to control the way their products are repaired.
This isn't so foreign. I can open an Apple repair shop and demand Apple sell me spare parts, so I can undercut their own repair centers, but I probably won't get very far. There are companies that sell 3rd party apple repair parts, but they don't expect any support from apple. They are lucky just not to get sued.
This is almost the polar opposite of planned obsolescence. This is the camera companies recognizing that people will fix rather then replace their cameras and so they want to control that after market business.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I wouldn't mind "Ending is better than mending," except I have no soma. Where's my soma, dammit?
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
And when something comes along and starts replacing cars, you bet your ass the car companies are going to tighten their belts and parts shops will probably be among the first to go.
If your business relies 100% on another company to provide you with something, you are at their mercy. Either rework your business or get a new business. Nikon has no moral or legal requirement to sell anybody anything.
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They also do things like "Hey, we need to replace the entire 'such-and-such' just because one tiny part in the 'such-and-such' is broken." If you are able to buy that tiny part yourself, at least you have the option to do it yourself or take it to an independent repair place and be specific about them replacing that part. Of course one could get into an argument about the labor cost of replacing that little part versus the entire... but the point is, if the manufacturer is the exclusive option for repairs, then they have a monopoly on repairs and will gradually side with the less thoughtful approach and potentially more costly/wasteful approaches. If the repair tech isn't feeling particularly motivated that day, they could tell you it's not repairable and say you need to buy a new one. Since there is no competition, it's not like you are going to take it elsewhere, so they have no incentive to maintain quality service.
As a very small time hobbyist manufacture (3-10 items a month sold typically on ebay) I would see this as crippling and would stop bothering to build my product at all. Thus thrusting the few customers I have into not having it at all. I'm sure they would thank you for your regulation.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
They sell parts to dealers who then go on to resell them to independent repair shops.
And then someone else will then be boycotting you for wearing animal skins.
And as the customer, we have the right to know this, so that we can make our purchasing decisions appropriately.
As of right now, no more Nikons for me (I mostly buy snapshots every couple of years, but also the D90 + assorted lenses).
He's not asking for the right to get the parts, he's asking people to boycott those companies until they provide the parts willfully. This is purely a consumer-side action, nothing litigious. IMO this is the right approach to such problems.
Leica? :)
Because you are an asshole. You want not only to be able to refrain from providing replacement parts to your customers, but to sue anyone who does. If you can't do the job right open space for those who can.
1 year for each order of magnitude on the MSRP:
less than $1 no warranty required
$1-$9.99 1 year warranty required
$10-$99.99 2 years warranty required
$100-$999.99 3 years warranty required
$1000-$9999.99 4 years warranty required
$10000-$99,999.99 5 years warranty required
Wearable parts are not required to be covered for free, but must be made available during the entire period.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
And so those companies should be allowed to do as they wish but not allowed to prevent others from providing the repair parts they refuse to provide.
When a new SLR body can be upwards of $6000, it's NOT going to be cheaper to get a new one.
What makes you think he's an immigrant?
Not specifically to me but certainly to the customers, who give them the privilege of exclusive rights over the products they manufacture.
There are seperate legal requirements that parts be available to the owners of the cars. That the dealers don't require ownership of a car to sell the part is mainly because nobody would buy their brand if they were so onerous. But the basic requirement of part availability is there (because it was seen as an anti-competitive move, it was pushed by the Big-3 back in the day to make it harder for European and Japanese makers to enter the market).
Learn to love Alaska
[citation needed]
Kid-proof tablet..
Do they make replacement parts available?
Learn to love Alaska
And what if car companies also took up the same idea. No independent repair shops, and higher prices for all repairs.
Actually, with cars the manufacturers do engage in this sort of kill-off-competing-repair-shops behavior, but not by limiting availability of parts; instead, they make the highly-specialized tools necessary to install the parts available only through the dealerships, who refuse to sell the tools to anyone.
Source: I am, among other things, an auto mechanic.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I'm guessing your point is that you can't make spare parts for EVERYTHING, due to scale, and costs of doing that.
This is a different situation, they are making the parts, but just refuse to sell them to certain people. How the law should be written to distinguish between those two is beyond me, but I'm fairly sure we have a small army of law makers that can figure out how to word it.
Those who can, do.
Car companies don't sell parts to independent repair shops. They sell parts to dealers who then go on to resell them to independent repair shops.
Any shop owner buying his parts from the dealer is an idiot - he can get the exact same parts from Autozone or O'Reilly's, without getting gouged by dealership markup. In fact, most auto parts retailers will set up special, discounted commercial accounts for shops to place their orders.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
but why should any buyer not have the COMPLETE price list for the item he's gonna buy? S
camera A: price 200â. Price of all spare parts combined:600â. Price for workmanship of repair of all parts: 500â. Availability of spare parts: 5yrs. Nearest repair point: 500km. ONLY IN-HOUSE REPAIR
camera B: price 250â Price of all spare parts combined: 400â... availability of spare parts: 15yrs. Neares repair point: 29km. Third parties allowed to repair.
Now, pick.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Although, I will add Nikon to my boycott list right now, along with Sony and Microsoft. I will never forget.
Why just Nikon? He lists Canon and Sony as well. Good luck buying a non-pro but still decent camera while avoiding those three.
I bought my wife one of those 16MP, knockoff GE "hybrid" cameras (point-and-shoot features, DSLR looks) last year; works fine, no complaints.
This one, as a matter o' fact.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Sorry in my niche, there wont be anyone else who can/will. It's get stuff from me or effectively not at all. In stead of the $150 that I sell it for I'm sure you could go to a manufacturer and have the dies made and molds cast and begin building the parts but it'll be close to $15k minimum by the time you're done.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
What? No...
Car companies license the right to produce after market parts for their cars to companies that then produce the after-market parts to spec or often above spec. Car manufactures rarely produce their own parts so it's almost impossible to stop the parts from being made. Also, the parts are largely the same across many models, years and even makes.
Repair shops can and do buy from dealers. But that's for specific purposes. If you have a newer car, often you need the "real deal" manufacturer stamped part to keep the warranty valid... even if the part is actually inferior (and it often is) Simply having a non-dealer shop work on your car probably voids your warranty but if they put OEM parts on it, the dealer has no way of knowing that. Car repairs by dealers are such a huge scam that even having in-warentee work done by the dealer is often more expensive than having the local mechanic fix it.
This is why I never buy a new car. I always do my own repairs. If I can't fix it, it goes to the junkyard and I get a new car.
The difference there is all the parts are available (as required by law). What the makers did was change diagnostics to require specific tools they own and are illegal to replicate (patented, trademarked, copyrighted, etc.) to prevent independent repair shops from having the same capabilities as the dealerships. That obviously anti-competitive behavior is explicitly within the law, as there are no tool restrictions, just parts.
Learn to love Alaska
Many years ago, I owned a car for which I bought a new oil filter from the dealer. The filter came with a notice that I had to check the length of the spigot, and, if it was too long, I should shorten it. The spigot on my car was indeed too long. This was not a recall item -- no assistance was provided by the manufacturer in fixing the length of the spigot. Apparently the manufacturer felt free to change the specifications of my car after selling it. I complained about this, but to no avail. However, after some investigation, I found that the dealers had a similar notice, but the maximum allowed length of the spigot was a little longer, and the spigot on my car was not too long by this specification.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
on a Nikon d200. For starters, he did top notch service and was in constant contact with me the entire time. He apologized for the delay as he had to source parts from Canada.
Camera works great now (bad CF slot) and I can't tell it was ever taken apart.
I understand his POV, and shame on Nikon for making him protest.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Braun is doing something related with their shavers. I bought one a few years back, and on the shelf next to it were replacement blades, along with information in the packaging telling me to replace the blades every year. So I bought the blades annually as advised, and one year I start having a horribly uncomfortable shave. Upon further inspection, I discovered their replacement blades (advertised as being correct for my shaver) were no longer of the same geometry, and not sharpened the way previous blades were. So a product that should have lasted 15 years or more was binned after only six years because the replacement parts were substandard. This was a barely visible change, and I suspect a lot of people simply assumed their shavers were "worn out" and needed replacement (by a new $150 model).
To me, this was a completely unethical move. But now I'm trying to figure out how you would propose we deal with this kind of situation. Caveat emptor? Regulations on replacement part availability? Capitalism and competition?
It's more than just replacement parts, it's entire replacement units.
I had a shower pump from Simple Human break on me, the handle just came off in my hand. After contacting the manufacturer because it was under warranty, they sent out a whole new unit. I was kind of surprised they wouldn't just ask for it back and replace the arm.
When I got it, it was slightly different. The arm was much thicker and it made me happy they revised the design for the design weakness. But there was more different. The fit and finish, if that makes sense for what's essentially a wall mounted plastic pump, was a lot worse. There was curved metal trim that was more triangular than curved, like it was forced into space instead of bent. The metal backing plate was now all plastic, and the gap between both plastic sides seemed misaligned. Even the manufacturer logo on the front was not level or centered. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was a knock-off.
If I had to guess, they have top-quality (except for the pump arm, but maybe that made it to retail) units in stores, and, as a way to trim down on warranty claim costs, they replace broken units with less-expensive lesser-quality units.
More Twoson than Cupertino
The designs of cameras have a lifecycle that approaches several months, some don't even make it thru the end of the year. This is a problem for both consumers, and repair people. I've waited for ages for parts for some of my cameras (and laptops, etc) to arrive even at the factory.
Each camera has test jigs and version-specific firmware to deal with. The complexities don't lend themselves to a productive third-party repair venue. Ask any Apple authorized repair shop how weird repairs can be.
Should third-parties get parts? Do they know how to use them? Do they use safe static discharge devices? Do the have the test software and parts needed to ensure the customer (me) gets the job done without charging scandalous amounts of labor with re-tries?
It's not an easy metaphor. The farrier and horse are one things, horse shoes another, and veterinary medicine still another-- all as the nature of the horse changes every several calendar quarters.
I feel for the plight of this repair guy, yet I also understand that consumer demands have made for short shelf-lives of the product, let alone backup repair inventory and the skills needed to do a reasonable job of the repair.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
This is a different situation, they are making the parts, but just refuse to sell them to certain people. How the law should be written to distinguish between those two is beyond me, but I'm fairly sure we have a small army of law makers that can figure out how to word it.
Perhaps the scale is different, but it's really the same. He is making parts, but just refusing to sell them except in the form of a finished product.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Sounds like Nikon is in violation of the law, at least if they are selling products in California.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Also, anyone who says "Nikon doesn't have a monopoly" isn't familiar with the way camera systems work. Nikon, Canon, etc have a pretty strong monopoly on any non-rich photographer who has bought into their lens system over the years. You can't easily jump ship to another manufacturer when you've got 3 years worth of salary sunk into proprietary glass.
I'm not a photographer so this will probably sound ignorant (because it is), but what makes lenses proprietary? Isn't it just physics, light input/output? Is it really impossible considering the pro-level costs to build mounting adapters to mate different branded components?
More Twoson than Cupertino
Nixon? I think you meant Nikon.
Whatever.
The issue is that I would like to be able to buy replacement parts to fix my camera rather than go to "your" shop. The question is, do I have a right to have that epxectation? If I bought the camera at a point in the time where I could get those parts, then damn right I should be able to get those parts, now. If I bought the camera after Nikon said they would not sell parts, then I am simply SOL.
Who really needs a TV that will never be moved to be less than an inch thick?
I had a number of large CRT TVs. The large ones are unsafe. It's not difficult to tip them over, and they are heavy enough to kill a child. Most don't care about the actual thickness, as 1.5" is just as good as 0.5" But some take that as a proxy for design quality.
Learn to love Alaska
but why should any buyer not have the COMPLETE price list for the item he's gonna buy? S
camera A: price 200â. Price of all spare parts combined:600â. Price for workmanship of repair of all parts: 500â. Availability of spare parts: 5yrs. Nearest repair point: 500km. ONLY IN-HOUSE REPAIR
camera B: price 250â Price of all spare parts combined: 400â... availability of spare parts: 15yrs. Neares repair point: 29km. Third parties allowed to repair.
Now, pick.
It doesnt work like that. Its more of a
phone x price $600. camera module $10, lcd $12, case $12. Motherboards you fix manually replacing individual parts (exotic ones you salvage).
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Yes, HELL YES, being a corporation means playing by our rules. EPA, FDA, Taxes, SEC; we have millions of rules about the behavior of corporations. They are not all good I will grant you, but we absolutely as the entity that creates their legal existence (government) have the right to enforce rules on them. The rules that control a corporation should be intended to force that corporation to act in a way beneficial to society while making a profit. I would say that we as a society are well within our any moral or legalistic code to force camera makers or car makers to sell to 3rd party repair shops at the same price that they sell to dealers. I continue to be amazed by people who want to allow corporations complete freedom of action. The laws that allow for the "personhood" of a corporate entity are there for the benefit of real people. We control those laws. We can certainly compel those fictional persons to act in any manner that we deem in the interest of the market or the wider society.
No sigs in BETA. Beta SUCKS.
Or, he can become such a dealer/distributor himself.
And he would have to sign a dealer agreement or distributor agreement. Likely the sale of such parts is restricted in the agreements. I know it is in other industries. Authorized distributors can only sell to authorized retailers, and only for set prices, or other such restrictions.
Learn to love Alaska
Make the manufacturer responsible for recycling the thrown away device and charge an additional tax for that so that it becomes more economical to design the device to last (or be repaired). And extend the mandatory warranty to 5 years for devices that are more expensive than, say, 100EUR...
I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Then there is no harm in forcing you to allow anyone who wants to do it, regardless. Besides, with 3D printing it is reasonable to think that at least replacement parts to your products, whatever you do, will be possible to be done sooner or later much cheaper than you think, if it isn't already possible.
What cannot be tolerated is giving someone exclusive rights to produce something and this person use it to prevent this thing to be produced at all.
It's worse than just that. Starting my gripe:
I wanted to buy a $2.80 rubber dust cap (for the usb and hdmi ports) on the side of my nikon d3100. That is one of the very few "user replaceable" parts that "Nikon Parts" website sells. The shipping on the $2.80 rubber cap? Try more than 10 dollars. I think it was 12 bucks or something to ship to Texas. Now that is a straight rip-off, but when I checked it seems that the "Nikon Parts" online store isn't really Nikon but being run by somebody else. So seems I cant even get parts from Nikon.
And you will not take any pictures, play any games, listen to music, or work on a computer! ;)
I wish that I could do that. I would be very rich then. "O damn, the tires have to be changed because they're worn out. What car shall I buy now?"
-- Cheers!
As an owner of a Nikon Camera who had to send their equipment in for repairs to their repair center, the experience was horrible. 3 months without the camera and a cost that almost was the price of replacing the body itself. Had we not been already invested a lot into the glass for it, I would have told them where to deposit the camera I sent them.
Voting them all out of office, now that's change I can believe in.
Also, anyone who says "Nikon doesn't have a monopoly" isn't familiar with the way camera systems work. Nikon, Canon, etc have a pretty strong monopoly on any non-rich photographer who has bought into their lens system over the years. You can't easily jump ship to another manufacturer when you've got 3 years worth of salary sunk into proprietary glass.
I'm not a photographer so this will probably sound ignorant (because it is), but what makes lenses proprietary? Isn't it just physics, light input/output? Is it really impossible considering the pro-level costs to build mounting adapters to mate different branded components?
I'm going to go lightweight on the descriptive because I'm not a physicist, and I only know what I've read and researched as a photographer. In addition, I'm loosely relating what I can recall.
"Proprietary" is covered in the mount and the wiring. There are mounting adapters that can mate different mounting types (even from different brands) but in all that I've seen, you lose any auto-focus and on-lens image stabilization. These are typically used by people who have some top-notch old lenses that don't have electronic features, they were completely manual to begin with.
Isn't it just physics, light input/output?
As far as the light in/out portion, if it can reach the sensor focused and sized to paint across the sensor, yes. You can see this from the boutique lens makers like Lensbaby (which has some pretty awesome creative lenses), and the alternative makers like Tamron and Sigma. However each of these makers produces different models of lenses for different lens mounts, which means the lenses you buy are still stuck with the mounting system of your camera maker.
Mounting Adapters also introduce a wide array of difficulties, as they increase the distance from the back of the lens to the surface of the sensor. Different lenses use different types of glass (even within the same lens) and also use different numbers of lenses. Adding more glass between the rear element of the lens and the sensor will almost always degrade photo quality, and trying to do it in a 1-size-fits-all adapter will definitely degrade most lenses photo quality. Some lenses zoom by moving the rear element as well, and some of these bring that rear element *very* close to the sensor, I'd imagine such lenses would be increasingly difficult to design adapters for. There are issues such as chromatic aberation (CA), lens distortion, barrel distortion, depth of field/focus (DoF), and diffraction that each lens is designed to avoid or correct when made. Adding anything between the lens and the sensor, even a few mm of air, can foul up those details and lead to shoddy images.
Animal skins are worn by beautiful animals and ugly people!
-- Cheers!
Also, anyone who says "Nikon doesn't have a monopoly" isn't familiar with the way camera systems work. Nikon, Canon, etc have a pretty strong monopoly on any non-rich photographer who has bought into their lens system over the years. You can't easily jump ship to another manufacturer when you've got 3 years worth of salary sunk into proprietary glass.
I'm not a photographer so this will probably sound ignorant (because it is), but what makes lenses proprietary? Isn't it just physics, light input/output? Is it really impossible considering the pro-level costs to build mounting adapters to mate different branded components?
it's the expense of replacing those lenses, since the method of connecting the lens to the body (where the image sensor is) is proprietary.
Samsung makes pretty good non-pro cameras too. But I guess many people here hate Samsung. ;)
-- Cheers!
The Canon 5 D Mark II, has just now been retired, and I think its life run was > 4 years or so.
I don't expect my new Canon 5D Mark III to be out of date or replaced in a year....
These are the kinds of cameras you get repaired if you can avoid damage that forces replacement.
I doubt this guy was repairing point and shoots which are disposable, but more like cameras that start at $1K and go up quickly from there.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I mostly agree with the technical issues - but I don't agree with that consumer demands make for short shelf-lives. People generally keep cameras for a few years - a good quality SLR camera will last 7-10 years.
The problem is that manufacturers are making shoddy products that break easily. Cameras used to be made like tanks, but these days some fall apart in your hands. I refuse to buy cheaply made cameras, and all of my cameras have lasted forever and still work.
Manufacturers are generating their own consumer demand by making shoddy products - products that aren't even worth repairing.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
DSLRs and higher-end compacts have a multi-year lifecycle. Lenses, too; there's only a handful of new lenses released in a year for a system. While it's inconvenient to have a third party doing repairs, certainly a number of third parties do. (Lensrentals, for instance, does a lot of their own repairs.)
... which then results in the boycotted boycotting the boycotter... by wearing their skin?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
There are surprisingly few optical problems (assuming you've got the space to work with) - a Nikon SLR lens (flange focal distance of 46.5mm) can be mounted on a Canon EOS SLR (flange focal distance of 44.0mm) with nothing but an appropriately shaped, 2.5mm-thick bit of metal sticking the two together. (The opposite would need special optics in the way in order to get proper focus, since otherwise the focal plane will be too far from the film / image sensor.)
Mirrorless, interchangeable lens cameras have very short flange focal distances (not being SLRs, they don't have a flappy mirror assembly between the lens and the image sensor). There's much more room to build adaptors that fit - potentially several centimetres when mounting an SLR lens rather than a few millimetres.
The main problem is all the electronic communications stuff present in modern lenses - for autofocus, setting the aperture and for the lens to communicate back its specifications, status and so on. Probably the most impressive range of adapters I've seen is from Metabones - some of which include full electronic compatibility between a Canon EF lens and a Sony NEX camera. (Not affiliated with them, and not a customer - primarily I'm hoping someone gets off their arses and builds a full-featured Nikon-lens-to-Canon-camera adapter. The existing dumb-bits-of-metal are great for video, but I'd like one that does everything, please!)
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Where does the commitment demanded by manufacturers become too high for a small shop?
I see so many camera models moving thru big box retailers, that it seems that few really have a long market life, except for the big DSLRs and the 4/3rds, and so forth. Consumer cameras seem to go poof, and they perhaps break as much as the pro models. Just looking at the Olympus new models announced at CES, it seems as though the churn for 2013 was almost half their product line. I really think that cameras models have a shorter sales life these days.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
In MY honest opinion, consumer-side action is also the right approach to never change the problem. Even less likely at working than facing a well-funded legal team. Consumers are morons who can be counted on making foolish choices. I have yet to see an example of many consumers working together to make a change on anything short of "Baby food SHOULDN'T be randomly laced with poison."
You could put conditions in to (effectively) apply this to only mass manufacturers.
How this is done I leave unstated, but I'd imagine you could do it by looking at a variety of factors.
This way, big companies making thousands of identical items can provide parts (because they have (require) the infrastructure to store/ship all the bits and pieces) play fair, but small folks like you or other "craftsmen" don't have yet more unreasonable demands placed upon them.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Physical connections, for the most part. You'd have to make an adapter, and keep in mind that changes the element spacing (eg the lens is now a bit farther from the sensor/film)
There's also some extra bits. For example, the lens assembly for my Canon has an electrical connector to support the focus mode switch (that's on the lens body) as well as to drive the focus servos.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
There's the big DSLRs, the 4/3 and m4/3, and then compact and bridge cameras. Repair shops rarely bother to try and fix compact and bridge cameras because they just aren't worth it (and have the product churn you talk about). The DSLRs and other system cameras still have pretty decent life, though. Olympus had a ton of new models because they're starting some fairly new product lines. (Okay, so when companies do that, you would expect poor third-party service. The same would go for, say, the Canon EOS M, which is a new line. But the mainline Canons and Nikons have substantial longevity still.)
Oh. It also tells the camera's software what kind of lens is attached.
I'd imagine some of that is a form of DRM (like in ink cartridges) but it also provides the camera useful data about the lens characteristics that is used by to tune/drive focus, exposure, etc.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
There are problems with the line of thought that would espouse a "right to repair" as it is being stated here. You certainly have a right to do whatever you want with your own property once purchased; but it sounds a lot like what is being proposed is that manufacturers be forced to provide additional services (in the form of parts resale) that they may not want to, or else be forced to sell to consumers that they may not want to.
I think most people would agree that such regulation would be awfully convenient for the consumer. I would argue that thats irrelevant, and that there is no good justification for such regulation, and that it would remove long-recognized business rights (the right to sell to whom they want, the right to refuse to offer certain products).
at the very least, let others provide them
AFAIK they cannot legally prevent this....
The point is, a manufacturer should be obligated by law to provide repair parts for reasonable prices
But this I believe would be dangerous. If a manufacturer does not wish to provide a product, I do not think it is anyone's business to tell them they must. If that's not good enough for you, consider that that may place considerable burden on smaller shops that dont really produce extra parts, and whose manufacturing process may not make it easy to get individual parts.
, but to sue anyone who does.
He never said this, and I dont think anyone would support that right. It is, I believe, illegal; I believe there have been numerous cases which establish the legality of aftermarket parts.
What is in question is whether anyone has the right to tell either this small hobbyist or the gigantic Nikon that they MUST provide parts-- which to me seems like a gross overreach of government power. A businesses right to do what business they want with whom they want has been recognized for a very long time.
Luckily the EU told them to sod off so we don't have this problem.
In fact in the UK the law goes a lot further. Products are expected to last a "reasonable amount of time", which for something like a car is 10-15 years. Obviously wear and tear is expected and you will need to put new oil in from time to time, but if the manufacturer decided to stop supplying essential parts after five years and made your vehicle unusable through no fault of your own you could claim a 66% refund (two thirds of the expected 15 year lifespan).
This actually happened to someone I worked with. The steering rack went and the dealer said they couldn't source a replacement part, so ended up exchanging the car for a second hand one and some cash based on the fact that he had only owned it for 6.5 years. It was a Korean brand IIRC.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Regulations on replacement part availability?
We have those in the UK and they work well. I'm not sure if 15 years is what the courts would agree the expected lifetime of a shaver is (laptops are usually 5-6 years, cars around 10-15 years) but if they decided on say 8 years and yours lasted six you could get back 25% of the purchase price.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Let me guess, You are the type that would crucify Samsung because you believe they copied from Apple, but you can not believe that perhaps they copied the business model as well?
Cars are cheap, getting them running can be expensive.
I wish I had a shop like the the GP...I might be tempted to sell the alignment rack. Just doesn't make sense as a home tool. Strings and sticks will get me to the 'pros'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Simply having a non-dealer shop work on your car probably voids your warranty...
No it doesn't. That's a scam that is perpetuated by dealers telling people that they won't honor their warranty unless there have all of their service done at the dealership. You can take your car anywhere and as long as you have your receipts showing you have had regular maintenance, your warranty is still valid. They may tell you otherwise because no mechanic likes doing warranty work but stick to your guns and you will get your warranty if you need it.
Worked on a BMW? Secret decoder ring sockets. The bolts are like torque tools. The sockets are like torque bolts.
They make _cheep_ versions now, but for decades it was tool truck only.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
When a company refuses to sell a product or service, they should lose all exclusive IP rights to the product so that others can fill the void. The privilege of 'intellectual property' should at least carry a minimal price.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Absolutely. Patents and copyrights are privileges. This is just another abuse, amongst many others, of those privileges.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The point is, a manufacturer should be obligated by law to provide repair parts for reasonable prices, or, at the very least, let others provide them.
The point is, a manufacturer should be obligated by law to provide parts for reasonable prices, let others provide them, or, at the very least, provide plans for parts and let others print them.
Enhanced that for you.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
If I boycotted every company that has wronged, I'd probably be living in a cave dressed in animal skins right now.
If lots of people boycotted ever company that has wronged them, then the companies would have to improve or be replaced by companies that do not wrong their customers.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Which is why grey markets don't exist.
About 15 years ago I had a coworker who's husband was one of the local factory Novell shops owner. He was quite annoyed when he found I had sourced my greybox Netmare licenses for below his cost.
He was also annoyed that I continued to install/admin netware after he had told me I should get all kinds of alphabet soup from him, so I was qualified. I pointed out that I had been doing it longer then CNE had existed and it was all butt simple by then anyhow. Nothing like netmare 2. (this was before it reverted back to netmare. Version 4.something).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They are, but only to their authorised repair services.
I'm not actually sad about this change. The number of old-timers running repair shops from back in the film days who simply have neither the equipment nor the expertise to repair a camera is incredible. Look at the D800 focus point fiasco. The focusing system required full recalibration and the changes written to the firmware. It wasn't about twiddling a screw or replacing a part like the cameras of yesteryear.
While I have no experience directly with it, I do know of at least one camera which was sent to a local repair shop 3 times and never quite worked correctly until it was sent back to a Nikon authorised service centre.
As for the sob story of the professional who will be out of work because he needs to mail his camera away, if he's a member of Nikon Professional Services his turnaround time would be less than a couple of days, it would be trivial for him to hire a camera during this period, and his insurance should cover the cost with the excess written off as a business expense. He doesn't have any of the above? Why does he call himself a professional?
Or maybe in a few years Nikon will have a reputation of being able to get good quality and perfectly executed repairs of sensitive camera equipment.
The number of "repair" stories I've heard of online seems to indicate that what Nikon are doing is solving a consumer problem, not creating one. Cameras are a bit more complicated than they were when these camera repairers were actual photographers.
This trend has been rearing its ugly head for a while, but Nikon is known to be particularly bad.
They are extremely stingy with their warranty policies and will try at every opportunity to invalidate your warranty using any excuse they can find.
Buy that lens in the US and you live in Canada (never mind that they're exactly the same product)? Get that camera repaired or even just cleaned at a reputable but not officially recognized business? Ever use a third party battery or accessory? They will seriously use these excuses to invalidate your *entire* warranty.
I recently ordered a replacement part from Parts Overnight (Australia's nominated Canon parts supplier). It took over a week to get my part. I get better service getting parts couriered from the US. Thanks Canon for your poor service. Thanks Parts Overnight for your even worse service.
In addition to mechanical tools, making sense of the model/year specific data on the OBD-II port is a mess too. The best I've gotten from anyone but my car's dealer since those were "standardized" in 1996 is "the car computer is not happy". My cynical side suspects much of the secrecy around engine tuning is protected under the excuse of emissions control, but is just as much a revenue protection issue.
My dad has a shop authorized by Philips. Not even fucking PHILIPS can get the parts. Nowadays if it's too complicated, you get a replacement. They don't stock parts, which is unveliebably stupid: a TV has 4 parts: the case, the panel, the PSU and the main board. it's always the PSU. but they won't stock PSUs, so, you get a new tv for a blown power transistor. For SOME models they do have parts (if the failure rate is too high, or if the problem has been identified and it's simple as replacing a transistor or photo-coupler)
One time we asked why.. off the record? Philips TV business is no longer based in Holland, it's now China. New policy from china: replace tv under warranty, FUCK the customer when warranty ends.
Woosh?
-- Cheers!
They are, but only to their authorised repair services.
The regulation reads 'shall make available to service and repair facilities'
It doesn't say authorized service and repair facilities; it doesn't say service and repair facilities that the manufacturer prefers; it doesn't say service and repair facilities except independents
There's no listed exception there at all....
Therefore: if there exists a place that is a service facility or is a repair facility, that requested literature and parts, and there is refusal to offer sufficient literature, or parts, then they would be in potential violation
Just wonder if there are 3rd party workshop that produce camera for the lenses.
Law being law I'm sure one could argue "They are not a service and repair facility because they can't do X and Y."
The legalese doesn't say "shall make available to any service and repair facilities" either. I want to fix my own camera, am I now a service and repair facility?
The omissions are just as important as the inclusions when reading the law. Is somewhere in detailed define what is "service" what is "repair" and what is a "facility"?
If you think that the good parts from a point and shoot camera are the features and the good parts of the DSLR are the looks then you are doing it wrong.
If the money we spend on goods isn't reflecting the apparent throw-away / disposable nature of the item as expressed by their manufacturers' unwillingness to ever touch or see the things again, then perhaps there *is* some fault to be found in the manufacturers. And if the increasingly unserviceable build and now even legal protection that we find in these goods prohibits us from repairing or servicing the goods ourselves, then we know for *certain* that there's some fault to be found in the manufacturers.
I work in a charity secondhand warehouse where all day I have to sort what's saleable from what isn't, and often this involves servicing an item that's 90% saleable into something that can be cleaned up and put on the floor.
The trend I've seen is that later models are built so that they can't be gotten into easily, meanwhile the mechanisms inside the cases are of declining quality.
Plenty of WWI and WWII era power tools, sewing machines, and hand tools are still working perfectly well. I use some huge WWI-era steel shears for cutting mouse cords and TV power cords. The other day I tested a power drill that was manufactured in 1937 and it's a better drill than the pile of Black and Decker and other 1980's behemoth models we have sitting around as possibly repairable (I'm not taking an interest, the pile will end up with the scrap guy who will take the iron and copper out of the motors and chuck the batteries in the battery bin).
Vacuums are the worst offender. Old crazy-looking steel monsters built to match art deco are still running fine and are easily serviced using standardized belts and motors available from anyplace you can buy belts and motors. The steel cases are conducive to re-use. Best of all, you can use steel parts with them without breaking them. If the base on your motor isn't lined up right with the screw posts, you can drill new holes because it's a steel part. We use the vacuum in the warehouse because it's reliable.
Meanwhile, late-model Kirby, Dyson, and other plastic-vacs are made not to be gotten into and in a most annoying fashion. One vacuum had a rug cleaning attachment that needed a cleaning itself. However, the method used to make the head was one-and-done. The superglue they used to put the two halves of the plastic together ensured that if you broke the head open to clean it, you weren't getting it back together again.
Especially when you try to get into a model made in China, you find that every possible corner has been struck off. Numerous toys and tools, upon opening, reveal of philosophy of screw-the-consumer. In this case, Chinese work slaves screw their boss who screws the corporation who screws the retailer who screws the consumer. They all know that, for instance, instead of putting that last Step Number 25 on the instruction sheet into action, the Chinese factory foreman realized that you could shuffle a sort of half-action toy onto the kids who maybe won't notice the missing feature, by MacGuyvering it a little bit on the assembly line. So the little toy monster that's supposed to masticate its jaw wide open and closed in a rhythm instead half-opens its mouth which falls shut again. And so on.
Out of everything we get donated, 85% of it is going to the scrap heap or into the trash. Part of the warehouse expense is $3,000 a week on emptying a quarter-traincar sized trash bin attached to a compactor.
And of that 85% trash, ranging the percentage of trash in the domain of year of manufacture follows an exponential curve. You could say "because old stuff is gone, there's only newer stuff left", but that doesn't hold when you go out on the sales floor and the average age of what we're selling is much older than the average age of what we're throwing away.
So what is reflected is that newer things are shit, and older things are cool enough that customers look to purchase them. Don't get me wrong, we actively try to put everything on the floor that we receive. When we have the knowledgeable manpower, we repair all kinds of things. B
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
I guess it is too late for boycotts to have an effect. Money is a weapon that travels at the speed of light and it is untraceable. (Yes YOUR money is well traceable, but who owns corporations? banks. Who own banks? who knows?)
But I do boycott myself. Because it's a moral choice. The effect is irrelevant.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Idiot. He's not talking about metric sockets. He's talking about special tools designed in many cases to do only one thing and only on one type of car many cases. There are a lot of these tool part numbers mentioned in repair tech data but they are proprietary and almost impossible to buy.
Oh there is nothing so beautiful as a lovely girl wearing only stockings, heels and a mink coat.
I was referring to this.
-- Cheers!
Short post as I have no time.
Car industry was ten years when I worked in it. All parts by law had to be availiable for ten years.
It's one of the reasons we (Rover/BMW) sold all our tooling after ten years.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
No: this is a completely different issue, it is not about new tech make old tech obsolete. It is as if you could only have your horses shod at a few ''approved'' farriers. Supply & demand would mean that these farriers could charge a lot of money ... but to become approved they need to pay bribes\h\h\h\h\h\h 'approval & training fees' to a central body.
Totally missed a chance for a car analogy. It's only as if you could get your car repaired at the dealer's shop and they charged much more than other mechanics.
Nah, what is a car other than a modern, new fangled horse? Your & my analogies are pretty much the same thing :-)
Worked on a BMW? Secret decoder ring sockets. The bolts are like torque tools. The sockets are like torque bolts.
They make _cheep_ versions now, but for decades it was tool truck only.
Indeed - matter of fact, my first experience of not being able to work on a car for lack of tools was when I was in college, trying to align the suspension on a classmate's 2000 BMW 5 series - the toe adjustment has to be done with a special tool, exclusively available to BMW dealerships.
Since neither BMW nor any of the nearby dealerships were willing to sell/loan one of these tools to our automotive technology training facility, I had no choice but to tell my friend he was S.O.L. Consequently, I flat refuse to provide BMW with any custom.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Actually, these days OBD-II diagnosis is a bit more available, thanks to cheaper scanners offered by companies like JC Whitney and Jegs. Granted, a lot of those lower-end scanners won't tell you much about your machine, other than reporting trouble codes, but if you have the bucks you can, as a consumer, purchase one of the super-fancy versions that does things like live sensor readouts, in addition to trouble code access.
Of course, if you have an Android device, you could always get a bluetooth OBDII reader and the Torque app to access that real-time sensor output goodness.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Such "restrictions" are illegal in the United States. Price fixing? Big No No. Restricted market? Not gonna happen.
So call up A Toyota distributor and ask for a Toyota. You'll never get one, and if you do, it'll be at a price set by Toyota. Sorry, reality trumps your idealistic nonsense.
Learn to love Alaska
Double whoosh on you. Ref the GP's awesome set of tools. You assume he can't change a tire. I assume the opposite.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
WHOOSH!!! on you :)
I said, I would be very rich then because I can't replace tires, because I don't have that awesome set of tools (I also lack the skills to use those tools). So I would have to buy a new car every time there was a little bit wrong with the old car. It was a joke.
-- Cheers!
They can do all the 3d printing they want. I just wont guarantee any kind of replacement parts supplied by me. Typically I do give them out if someone needs them, (it is a hobby anyway) but if I was required by law to provide parts for any time after my small production runs I would no longer do them at all. Often times the molds don't hold out past a single production run.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
The omissions are just as important as the inclusions when reading the law. Is somewhere in detailed define what is "service" what is "repair" and what is a "facility"?
<Policeman> I'm afraid i'm going to have to write you a ticket, for 45 miles per hour in a 25 zone.
<Driver> No thanks.. I am excluded from the 25 zone. The law says drivers must obey posted speed limit signs, but not ALL speed limit signs. It also doesn't define exactly what counts as a speed limit sign. The definition is intentionally vague on that point, and as you know, that means, the law requires the most permissive interpretation possible.
<Driver> 5 miles back, there was a 45 mph sign posted. I obey all speed limit signs, which have been approved by my appointed beancounter committee, and that 45mph sign was approved -- the signs must meet certain standards, before I will authorize them. They must be in pristine condition, and they must have been there in unadulterated form for no less than 5 years: they must be adjacent to certain properties I have a private business relationship with involving quid pro quo, then I will allow for an application to be submitted, for them to become vehicle manufactured authorized speed limit sign locations.
Funny you seem to think the law is black and white in that regard too. There are "approved" signs and unapproved signs. I for instance am not in any way obligated to obey the speed limit on the road into the airport. Where I live approved signs have government markings on the back and a serial number.
And for your first point, the law DOES define what a speed limit sign is, it defines it's shape, colour, font, legal uses, and other things.
That is my point. Show me a definition of what is a "service" and "repair" "facility". This is the law, and like all laws they are often very specific, and like all laws they quite frequently fall down on semantics.
I still remember the case of our local police department having to throw out some 200 speeding fines because the law actually defined the maximum angle of incline an officer was allowed to hold the speed gun. They were booking people coasting down a hill.
Is this nation not founded on principals of fairness and equality? As citizens of the United States of America, we have the right to stand up when we feel like we are being taken advantage of whether it be an issue of race, gender or as consumers and businesses. We have the right to a democratic process. We also have freedom of speech. Mr. Kelly Chong is reaching out to the consumers and businesses who are affected by this new change in policy in hopes that they will join him in speaking out for change. To assume this small camera repair store is the only one suffering the consequences of a disregard for fair business practice shows ignorance. The State of California enforces an Antitrust & Business Competition Law. This law protects small business like Pro Camera Repair, Inc. from “unfair competition”. The availability of repair parts to a repair business is vital. Therefore, the removal of Nikon parts which have been supplied to this specific company amicably for decades would be considered “unfair”. This law was set in place to create a balanced competition between businesses and corporations. Just because a small business does not have thousands of dollars to pour into a large Civil lawsuit does not mean they do not deserve the rights which have been laid out for them in the Antitrust & Business Competition law. What better way to reach out for help, than to inform the public (consumers and businesses) that Nikon’s new policy is against California Law and takes advantage of businesses that have been working with them for decades. For more information visit: http://oag.ca.gov/antitrust
Yes!! Punish success!! exactly.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
It's not punishment. You're already storing the components, the only extra cost would involve sales/shipping of them. Hand the costs down if you feel like it.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
In fact, our technicians at Pro Camera Repair, Inc. have been fully trained in their field. Some of the equipment we are qualified and trained to repair include: -35mm cameras -Camera lenses both Manual and Auto focus -Canon equipment -Nikon equipment -And all Digital Cameras Our top technicians have been working in the electronic/camera repair industry for over 30 years. Additionally, Pro Camera Repair, Inc. holds a current BEAR (Bureau of Electronics and Appliance Repair) license. We take all required and necessary precautions when repairing equipment and we also have the test software mentioned in the previous post.
Mr. Kelly Chong represents us here at Pro Camera Repair, Inc. and he is most definitely asking for the rights to these parts whether the company providing the parts sells them willfully or if we have to proceed with a legal route.
According to the Antitrust & Business Competition Law of the state of California, we do have a right to the parts in question. "Antitrust enforcement is an important component of a sound free-market economy. Vigorous, competitive marketplaces established through antitrust vigilance help consumers by ensuring fair prices for goods and services, an array of products to choose from, quality goods and services, and the steady introduction of innovative new products." Please visit this link for more information: http://oag.ca.gov/antitrust
Here at Pro Photo Repair, Inc., we complete repairs on all kinds of photographic equipment. Some of the recent products we have had the pleasure of repairing/servicing range from the roughly $7,000.00 Leica M9, to the smaller point and shoot cameras. Many professionals in San Diego, the surrounding area and all over the United States choose us to repair and service their equipment. As I am sure all of you are aware, Nikon is a very popular choice in the photographic industry and we are devastated by the new policy change.
Agreed, people don't have a right to parts or information from manufacturers, but I wouldn't mind a disclosure requirement on cameras, computers, TVs, appliances, et cetera, that cost over a certain amount, e.g. $500 or $1000.
Disclosure should cover that company's repair record on similar products and components, average cost of repairs and upgrades during the expected life of the product, shipping cost responsibilities, and whether external services are available or not allowed....
We end up shopping on price and features because the manufacturers get to hide the total cost of ownership. I'm surrounded by a Nikon camera, a Tivo and a kitchen full of 3 y.o. GE appliances that all have exorbitant repair costs for what should be minor repairs or scratches.