Slashdot Mirror
FTC Warns Manufacturers That 'Warranty Void If Removed' Stickers Break the Law (vice.com)
schwit1 writes: The Federal Trade Commission put six companies on notice today, telling them in a warning letter that their warranty practices violate federal law. If you buy a car with a warranty, take it a repair shop to fix it, then have to return the car to the manufacturer, the car company isn't legally allowed to deny the return because you took your car to another shop. The same is true of any consumer device that costs more than $15, though many manufacturers want you to think otherwise.
Companies such as Sony and Microsoft pepper the edges of their game consoles with warning labels telling customers that breaking the seal voids the warranty. That's illegal. Thanks to the 1975 Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, no manufacturer is allowed to put repair restrictions on a device it offers a warranty on. Dozens of companies do it anyway, and the FTC has put them on notice. Apple, meanwhile, routinely tells customers not to use third party repair companies, and aftermarket parts regularly break iPhones due to software updates.
Companies such as Sony and Microsoft pepper the edges of their game consoles with warning labels telling customers that breaking the seal voids the warranty. That's illegal. Thanks to the 1975 Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, no manufacturer is allowed to put repair restrictions on a device it offers a warranty on. Dozens of companies do it anyway, and the FTC has put them on notice. Apple, meanwhile, routinely tells customers not to use third party repair companies, and aftermarket parts regularly break iPhones due to software updates.
"The use of" "parts is required to keep your" "manufacturerâ(TM)s warranties and any extended warranties intact"
https://www.hyundaiusa.com/myhyundai/manuals-and-how-tos/Getfaq?faqId=2&category=Consumer_Awareness
"This warranty shall not apply if this product" "is used with products not sold or licensed by"
https://www.nintendo.com/consumer/manuals/warrantytext_us.jsp
"This warranty does not apply if this product" "has had the warranty seal on the" "altered, defaced, or removed."
https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/warranties/ps4/
You cannot take a Tesla to any repair shop you want. You have to take it to Tesla’s shop or else they will void your warranty.
Currently says (my enboldening):
Some companies intentionally design their products to break if disassembled. I wouldn't be surprised if you do void the warranty by causing damage disassembling it.
They appear to be an exception to this rule at the moment.
Here's hoping the FTC takes notice of them, finally.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
hard drives have this as well, because (or at least partly) breaking that seal in a non-clean room environment allows dust to get in which will eventually ruin the drive. So if my opening the drive actually causes it harm, its still under warranty now?
Who is Ajit Pai's peer at the FTC? We need to start piling up the hate on him too for choosing KKKorporate interests over those of the People!!!
Oh, wait...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I can understand the use of these stickers on something like a mechanical hard drive, where opening the cover allows dust in which could damage it. I can't think of many other cases where it's warranted though.
I honestly can't agree with this. They're not saying users can't open up devices and try to fix things themselves - nothing wrong with that. They're just saying that attempting to open up and repair yourself or at an unlicensed shop voids the warranty. I don't see how that's unreasonable. No company should be expected to honor a warranty on devices that were broken or improperly repaired by tinkerers who don't know what they're doing.
That's great that the stickers are unlawful (as they should be) but what about things like fingerprint scanners on cell phones?
IIRC, there was an issue with Apple where the iPhone fingerprint lock wouldn't work if it was removed/replaced by a third party. This seems like a reasonable restriction from the customer's perspective.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Apple doesn't need stickers. They just use glue and impossible manufacturing methods
Anyone tell that to John Deere?
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/03/22/0535242/why-american-farmers-are-hacking-their-tractors-with-ukrainian-firmware
Surely just using the device voids the warranty?
We won't have Moscow Donnie to kick around much longer.
Software updates? Hmmm. I wonder really if that is actually true. Who is to say Apple isn't doing something similar to the old DOS days when Microsoft intentionally buggered their code so some apps would not run on other DOSes of the time.
I remember hearing a looooong time ago that this feature,
no manufacturer is allowed to put repair restrictions on a device it offers a warranty on
has been interpreted by the courts to mean that when a manufacturer offers either repair or replacement under warranty, they can't then state "at our option" because it limits the consumer's choices (even though many manufacturers do just that). And thus, that a consumer can, with sufficient motivation and resources, force a manufacturer to exercise the option the consumer wants rather than what the manufacturer selects.
Can anyone verify that my recollection is accurate?
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
should read
"software updates regularly break iphones with aftermarket parts"
Exactly on point
To be clear, the apple products that get repaired by third party companies get broken by Apple updates that target the fixes.
It seems like exactly the kind of legislation that would never get passed in almost any era and would have been heavily lobbied against by nearly every US manufacturer. In 1975, the lack of easy access to data on pending bills, etc, also seems like it would have been easier to quietly kill a bill like this.
It also seems like the kind of bill that companies almost could have rallied their employee unions' to oppose, too. "This bill will cost us millions and we will be forced to cut jobs."
I suppose to corollary question is -- how come it hasn't been repealed or (repeatedly) gutted with exceptions for specific industries, especially automotive or other industries that got beat up by foreign manufacturers?
... aftermarket parts regularly break iPhones due to software updates
Software updates regularly break iPhones that contain aftermarket parts.
If the aftermarket part worked with a previous version of the OS, there's no excuse for it NOT working with a newer version. I'm pretty sure Apple breaks far more phones than aftemarket parts do.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
IANAL but I don't believe the FTC's argument would hold up under trial. It's a nice thought and the FTC really wants to push the idea, but reading the bill there appears to be enough loopholes to allow this as a legal practice. Read the whole law and it becomes apparent that there are plenty of provisions to protect manufacturers as well as consumers. I started pasting relevant sections, but there's just too much and it'd be easier if everyone just educated themselves by reading the law in it's entirety.
Mfg Response: Fine, we just won't offer warranties at all then.
Had a damaged disc drive from a drop and wouldn't read games so I took it to a local repair shop.
Local repair shop couldn't get the parts required to fix it.
Subsequently discovered fall damage was covered by warranty sent the Xbox one to Microsoft and was informed that they would not repair it at any price because the sticker had been removed by the local repair shop to inspect the damage.
Iirc ended having to mail it off to a professional place in Texas who was able to fix it for about $179
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Please rephrase "and aftermarket parts regularly break iPhones due to software updates" to "IPhone software upgrades regularly break aftermarket parts".
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
People keep buying these products from these obviously shady companies. Yes I'm talking about you Apple. You are a shady company.
You may have fooled the sheeple with your flashy ads and catchy marketing, but you're peddling garbage that breaks easily, can't be serviced by design and generally is inferior products at a premium price.
There was a time when I had some shreds of sympathy for people who purchased Apple gear and thought they were buying premium hardware but were really getting substandard crap at a vastly inflated price. No sympathy left. You made that choice, you live with it.
I won't even go into console gaming machines that stick these stickers to their trash. But, on a more humorous side, I am exceptionally amused by SODIMM's I get from discarded laptops that have 'warranty void if removed' sticker on them.. like there's any way to 'service' a SODIMM. LOL.
Will humanity learn that a disposable ecosystem for our gadgets is really f'ing stupid and braindead? Probably not.
Make a stand, make a choice. Buy products that are not only built well from the start, but are very serviceable, with replaceable parts made easy and simple even for the non-technician. Dell was one of these companies, but I dunno, some of their newer laptops seem to be adopting the 'use it until it doesn't work then throw it away' motto. As long as consumers keep buying the disposable gadgets, companies will keep making them. Stop buying that crap.
There are items which when opened in improperly equipped repair shops should not be covered by warranties. Disk drives and CPUs come to mind. If I open a rotating platters disk drive looking for what is wrong the dust and debris that invades the drive renders it's operation extremely iffy. Such warranty seal breakage should be exempt. If somebody asks a third party to repair it then the third party should warrant the repair.
On the other hand opening the back of a TV set exposes nothing to dust or dirt damage that is exceptionally vulnerable. So if Hapless Harry opens the case, looks around, decides he is out of his depth, closes the case, and sends it for warranty repair it should be covered seals notwithstanding. But if he decaps some of those pretty rectangular thinguses inside, he's on his own.
{^_^}
The sticker "warranty void if opened" means one thing:
The manufacturer offers a warranty on their product as long as the product is not opened.
Simple as that. Every customer has the right to not buy the product if they don't agree with these terms or simply ignore the contract and rip off the sticker.
Tampering with a product willy-nilly under the hood has of course a high risk of damaging it and so is using replacement parts of bad quality. That is obvious. No manufacturer can warrant their products to be free from manufacturing defects if that warranty has to include damage by willfull tampering, neglect and exchanging critical parts with substandard replacements.
With the hundreds of components in every complex consumer item, it is insane to demand the manufacturer warrants each of them individually or employ a detective agency to determine if every single chip, program, circuit, wheel, pulley, lever and wire is in the configuration it left the factory, ie is a manufacturing defect.
Of course a manufacturer can offer warranty that covers a ton of possible abuse and a detective agency to tell aftermarket tuning from manufacturing defect, but it is completely obvious that this is far more expensive. So they don't offer it for the same price, and instead offer the standard warranty "we guarantee X if you don't do Y and don't peel off that sticker".
Why is it so hard to have a freedom to enter contracts and a freedom of association for people?
Back in the 90s I worked as a field tech for PC hardware - everything from printers to laptops to monitors. Name brands like Dell, HP, Apple, and so on. I had manufacturer training courses and was supplied with the special tools, and special phone numbers for support.
I was never told to look for those stickers, which often appeared across seams you'd open if you needed to access the devices. They were never mentioned once. I also did not have any way to even get hold of them if I wanted to replace one after destroying it myself during authorized warranty service.
So, there's that.
Perfectly Normal Industries