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Companies Can't Legally Void the Warranty For Jailbreaking Or Rooting Your Phone (vice.com)
Reader Jason Koebler writes: Manufacturers that threaten to void the warranties of consumers who jailbreak or root their phones are violating federal law.
Under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975, manufacturers cannot legally void your hardware warranty simply because you altered the software of an electronic device. In order to void the warranty without violating federal law, the manufacturer must prove that the modifications you made directly led to a hardware malfunction.
"They have to show that the jailbreak caused the failure. If yes, they can void your claim (not your whole warranty—just the things which flowed from your mod)," Steve Lehto, a lemon law attorney in Michigan, wrote in an email. "If not, then they can't."
Under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975, manufacturers cannot legally void your hardware warranty simply because you altered the software of an electronic device. In order to void the warranty without violating federal law, the manufacturer must prove that the modifications you made directly led to a hardware malfunction.
"They have to show that the jailbreak caused the failure. If yes, they can void your claim (not your whole warranty—just the things which flowed from your mod)," Steve Lehto, a lemon law attorney in Michigan, wrote in an email. "If not, then they can't."
Not mentioning the name (things have changed) they ask for nothing in return for it's use and damn friendly, but a site that walks one through rooting of ones phone (through it's postings).
That's easy for manufactures to do, and they already are - knox security that blows fuses. Blown fuse==out of warranty.
I never knew there was such a thing as an attorney specializing in law pertaining to lemons.
That's easy for companies to do, and they are already doing it. With knox security, blown fuse=out of warranty.
You root that phone, the warranty flag gets set to no more for u status.
Who is this guy, and why should we assume he's an authority on law in general or the subject in particular? I glanced at the TFA, and as far as I can tell it's just an opinion piece written by some random blogger. Sure, he trots out the "Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975"... but, heck, I've heard random nut cases claim the Internal Revenue Service is illegal too.
The only appeal to authority I noticed was a paragraph where an unnamed FTC person said it "should not" void the warranty, but they also "would not commit to taking any sort of action".
#DeleteChrome
My iPhone quit after only three days, but my local Apple store refused to replace it since they saw an app that wasn't in the app store. The Apple employees are trained to look for such. I paid $800 for something that only worked for about two and a half days.
"Hello AT&T customer service"
"Yes I would like to enter an RMA Please.
I was in my room when suddenly my phone CAUGHT FIRE!.
I was in such a panic about it, I threw the phone down the stairs and it landed in the toilet.
Thankfully that put the fire out but I'm pretty sure that's not supposed to happen, so can you warranty this?"
FURTHERMORE, I think that any company that is trying to get out of paying for warranty claims for something so ridiculous (a software change that can be completely undone by reinstalling the OS) should NOT be trusted! If you did not harm the hardware in any way by your software replacement, then the company that sold you the device has leaders who are thieves!
It would not hurt to mention the country in the summary, even if this is a US-centric site.
The author appears to be unaware that laws are not the same in all countries.
It would be interesting to compare, as most developed countries have a warranty by law (statutory) that cannot be disclaimed.
The US has implied warranty , but that does not cover failures if it works at first??
The Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act offers the cop-out of letting companies choose a full or limited warranty. So guess what Apple does? Do many US companies offer a full warranty? So what's the point? It seems Apple/Samsung just needs to say the magic words limited warranty and do whatever the hell the want.
The issue with efuses is like welding the hood shut, so you cannot service the engine.
It forces "physical damage" to become necessary to gain the access you should have been able to get anyway. In the case of the welded hood: you have to cut through the welds. In the case of efuses protected boot loaders: the boot loader enforces strong crypto against custom kernels, preventing boot of devices without the magic number baked into them, and if you flash a new boot loader, bam, efuses blown.
When the hardware that gets damaged is little more than a "warranty void" sticker, just in digital form, the oems are stretching things pretty thin.
I would love to see them be told that they cannot do these kinds of things. Sadly, that is not how the world works today.
Magnuson-Moss has been thrown around by car tuning enthusiasts since it was passed in 1975. It sounds good in theory. The reality is that you are an individual with limited resources going up against a multi-billion dollar global entity with a large team of full-time legal resources. It costs them nothing to deny your warranty claim until you win in court. How much time and money are you going to risk to get your $400 - $800 phone replaced? If you happen to be a professional Lemon Law lawyer, then I guess it's worth it to you to make a point. For the rest of us, you just buy a new phone from a different manufacturer.
They will just laugh at you - Mag-Moss who??
Legally maybe not, but holding them to it is a different matter entirely.
haha good luck with that. Laws in this country are only to protect the rich. It will cost you more than the warranty covered to get this upheld.
Or Apple. Same luck with either!
It's called the Magnuson Moss Act because if a company tries to void your warranty then Carrie Anne Moss will invade your company wearing dark glasses and carrying two machine guns.
$1 each? a steal!
For years we've seen posting by people who chose to use operating systems other than the one provided with the computer they bought. When hardware had issues, the computer vendors invariably claimed that the hardware must have failed because the customers weren't running the preloaded Windows.
Somebody's got a frowny face.
Boo! Better luck next time!
Your analysis of the statute is excellent. However, the code of federal regulations extends it a bit.
See 16 CFR 700.10 - Section 102(c).
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cf...
Quoting the Code of Federal Regulations:
--
such provisions are deceptive under section 110 of the Act, 15 U.S.C. 2310, because a warrantor cannot, as a matter of law, avoid liability under a written warranty where a defect is unrelated to the use by a consumer of âoeunauthorizedâ articles or service.
--
The phrase " warrantor cannot, as a matter of law, avoid liability ... where a defect is unrelated to the use by a consumer of âoeunauthorizedâ articles or service" may apply.
The quoted CFR text is saying why a manufacturer may not void a warranty due to repair by unauthorized service centers, or using unauthorized parts. The text itself does *not* limit the "cannot, as a matter of law" to only unauthorized parts, though, and it could well be argued that "unauthorized firmware" is an "unauthorized part" which may not void a warranty.
This is not even news. If your phone won't let you do what you want, you don't buy it.
This is why only uninformed females and homosexuals buy Apple phones. It is a walled garden.
Actually, no they won't. Unlike most consumer protection laws, Magnuson-Moss actually has teeth. You don't HAVE to sue them in court and prevail. All you have to do is file a claim with the Federal Trade Commission, and THEY'LL do the grunt work for you. After reviewing your claim, they'll forward it to the manufacturer, who has a limited amount of time to respond and either 1) agree to cover the repair, or 2) file a rebuttal that explains the legal basis for their refusal.
As a practical matter, manufacturers almost NEVER do anything besides meekly grunt an apology at the FTC & agree to cover the repair, because challenging the FTC and losing is WAY more expensive than grudgingly eating the cost of a warranty repair they would have otherwise refused.
With Magnuson-Moss, the deck is stacked VERY heavily against manufacturers in favor of consumers. It's probably one of the best consumer protection laws ever passed, because the members of Congress who wrote the law weren't just going through the motions to appease voters... they were as personally pissed off at the automakers as the general public was, and they wanted the automakers' blood to metaphorically flood the streets of Detroit.
There may be some law some place saying they can't legally do this. There is another law some place saying they legally can do it. The law is incredibly complex and is open for interpretation by the court system. The court system is largely blind to facts and circumstances. However the courts do believe in weighing the amount of gold each side has access to. My guess is that the side representing the phone companies claiming that 'jail breaking' voids the warranty has more gold than the side that wants to jail break phones. Hence jail breaking is highly illegal, and may lead to incarceration, or removal of your parental rights. Only terrorists, pedophiles and racists want to 'jailbreak' phones.
Don't be a racists paedophile. Don't jailbreak phones. David Duke, Osama Bin Ladden, and the Jared Foggle were all jailbreakers.
This is the problem with theoretical thinking. In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is.
Sure, in theory, there is this law that says one thing. But, in practice, there are many laws, and they say conflicting things.
Certainly the manufacturer's attorney would present the "we provide firmware at no charge" argument that you made. And plaintiff's attorney would say it doesn't matter because CFR says "It's guaranteed (but not really)" it's *deceptive*, which is unlawful regardless.
> it offends sound reason for something which is very clearly written to be "deceptive."
Consider:
LIFETIME GUARANTEE!!!!
(fix pages of fine print) Guarantee void if unapproved apps are installed. (more pages of fine print)
I would say that's deceptive. The clause voiding the warranty is written right there in the pages and pages of fine print - and it makes the "LIFETIME GUARANTEE!" claim deceptive because many users wouldn't actually have any guarantee under those terms. There may be no fundamental difference between "unapproved apps" and "unapproved firmware".
...they will just flash your device back to the default before troubleshooting.
Problem fixed? They give it back to you, tell you they flashed to factory software, and it works. Deal.
If you hacked your Tesla and crashed it while in autopilot mode, is Tesla still liable?
Ha ha. SECURITY!
The FTC will not do anything. If you're lucky, their computer will e-mail you a "10 tips for avoiding fraud" link. That's it. I've reported some truly heinous misrepresentation and fraud – actual letters, reasonably written, proper English, stating the facts dispassionately – and have never once even received human acknowledgement. They aren't listening.
After all, to make use of the referenced law you must go to court.. and just how many people have the financial resources to survive a court battle with the Apples,
and Samsungs of the world?
And it would come down to their expert saying what you did broke the phone and against your expert saying it didn't with the guarantee that if they lost they
would appeal.
This is how they "get away" with patenting "software", they insist that the software is separate from the effect on the hardware, and they're patenting that. So ONLY if the effect of the software is to break hardware can a change to the software be a user-created damage of the hardware and thereby void warranty.
Not commenting on the quality of info, just the existence thereof:
ahref=https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyNote3/comments/2xb7p5/solution_reset_the_knox_fuse_to_0x0_for_note_3/?st=is0j5spv&sh=2d04a482rel=url2html-5936https://www.reddit.com/r/Galax...>
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Why do companies bother to offer warranties if there are all these weird nanny laws out there?
I don't want the products I'm working on to be supported in all cases (users start fooling around with server config files, etc).
Wouldn't this also apply to the John Deere "You can't touch this" standard for their tractors and equipment? Same with the automotive industry's "No touchy our hardware"???
Usually jailbreaking doesn't break hardware so this isn't actually a big issue usually AND companies CAN require that you return the phone for warranty either with a support firmware/OS install or can return it to you with an supported firmware/OS at their discretion and possibly a form that can no longer be jail broken.
In the few cases where firmware could break hardware there are probably loopholes even with this law that exempt "damage caused by user". Akin to how you can NOT get warranty support on your stock car engine if you put a after-market supercharger on it and blow the engine.
Just because they aren't supposed to doesn't mean they won't. Those of us who are auto enthusiasts face the same issue - going to the dealer with modded cars. I had an engine speed sensor crap out, and they wouldn't cover it because of the tune. I've had numerous other issues that I've asked to have covered under warranty and have been refused simply because my car is tuned and modded.
It would seem common sense would prevail. If your battery explodes because the kernel governor let the CPU run at its max and overheat...you can't expect that to be covered. If your car's turbo fails because you're running a tune with increased boost pressure, you can't really expect that to be covered either. But if a sensor fails, or an electrical gremlin shows up, and they try to blame it on your aftermarket exhaust...hardly.
So how come I can't recover from my Motorola Moto that was hit by stagefright while connected to Verizon, while paying for Verizon service?
I'm out $600 for this LG phone.