Everyone wanting to operate their business in the way SaaS or subscription service is really annoying.
Photoshop gets jealous of saas numbers so they put out the creative cloud. Printer companies authenticate their ink cartridges. Coffee makers only accept their own branded cartridges.
Right to repair, right to modify, it all comes down to ownership.
"You will own nothing, and be happy." -WEF
Big capital has been fighting to strengthen private property and eroding personal property.
- ¿Drawing a schematic of a thing you own for repair?
- ¿Creating a spare part to repair a thing you own?
Those infringe on companies private property so you must have no rights over your personal property.
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Personal_property#/Personal_vers...
What's happening is more like a lot of bugs trying to get into a box of food. The marketers and their lawyers have always used whatever tricks are at their disposal to sell one product and ship another, and if the latter is just a use license, so much the better. They don't need to be actively coordinated; their actions naturally support one another by damaging the box.
>The FTC also alleged that Harley-Davidson failed to fully disclose all of the terms of its warranty in a single document, requiring consumers to contact an authorized dealership for full details.
>By telling consumers their warranties will be voided if they choose third-party parts or repair services, the companies force consumers to use potentially more expensive options provided by the manufacturer. This violates the Warranty Act , which prohibits these clauses unless a manufacturer provides the required parts or services for free under the warranty or is granted an exception from the FTC.
The Warranty Act was enacted in 1975. This is not a new fight. It is an ongoing conflict that requires each generation to be engaged in defending the box and repairing it.
And studies show the more stuff you own, the happier you are, so this is a direct attack on happiness. Experiences don't matter, stuff does.
I think the conspiracy theory is imagining a bunch of wealthy elites sitting around in a dark room Illuminati style discussing how they can turn everyone into serfs renting everything from them.
The reality is that our capitalist economy is very short sighted and wants quarterly profits and returns. Subscriptions provide predictable and constant income, you can tweak the later both by raising prices or increasing subscribers.
well, according to Marxism that is a way to socialism :) And USSR was exactly it - a country of wage-slaves not owning anything and ruled by the elite.
This tethering should not be allowed. Anything that a manufacturer does to a product after it is sold should in principle be possible through another party.
It’s not as simple as it seems.
If you don't want anyone else to work on your products, then you need to only rent or lease them out.
If you claim to "sell" the product to the customer, then THE CUSTOMER OWNS IT, and should be able to do whatever T.F. they want, including decompiling, reverse-engineering, breaking locks or codes, etc.. The only thing they should not be able to do is manufacture and resell copies of it.
And, if you only lease/rent your product, you are responsible for disposal at the end.
Seems like a reasonable distinction and deal to make.
Acting like you are selling something when you are really only leasing it out, and withholding information and rights to the object is dishonest.
Just because it is profitable does not mean that it is right.
This needs to be codified into law.
Leasing ink on a per page basis is in now: https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/cv/instantink
It’s amazing libraries have managed to stay true to their goal and not charge membership fees. Should authors be getting residuals on every read of their book in the same way every Netflix play of a movie pays an actor???
Those liquid cartridges are always drying up essentially causing you to throw away money you spent. For this type of cartridge getting the cartridge replaced frequently puts the burden on them and saves you money if you don't print much.
For toner it makes more sense to just buy the cartridge and hold on to it.
From what I understand from the article, Harley and Westinghouse aren't stopping you from repairing your own stuff, it's just that doing so voids their warranty. Presumably on the logic that you may have made changes that they can't be expected to support, or inexpert repairs could have caused damage.
And there's some logic to that, but it ignores the fact that if the item is still under warranty, those independent repairs should have been done under warranty too. (I guess emergency repairs where the owner can't afford to wait for the official repairs are the primary reason for such repairs?) And also that such repairs could have been done expertly or have been very limited, so revoking warranty for them may still be unjustified.
But I'd say there's a bit of grey area here. I don't think you can expect manufacturers to clean up other people's mess for free under warranty.
This legal action is about Harley saying your warranty is void if you have repairs done through a third party.
I mean the law says whatever it says and that’s the end of it, but it sounds like crap to me.
If I sell you a widget and I guarantee it’ll work for 5 years as long as you have me repair it instead of bob the janitor, I have a hard time seeing the problem. Frankly I think if you have bob the janitor repair your widget it’s now on bob to provide a warranty.
But what I think doesn’t matter, whatever the law requires is.
This goes beyond third-party repairs. The law says the company can't invalidate a warranty even if the user MODIFIED the product in question, unless the modification caused the issue for which the customer is seeking warranty service.
So the problem is this attempt to invalidate an entire warranty because of irrelevant actions the owner might have taken.
>I guarantee it’ll work for 5 years as long as you have me repair it instead of bob the janitor
Its called a lease aka I dont own a thing, I just pay rent. https://www.gmfinancial.com/en-us/business-financing/busines...
It also starts from the assumption that the "authorized" repairer can repair something better than an unauthorized repairer, which is silly.
Also see this comment for a practical take:
I think it was deemed abusive partly because independent dealers are deemed skilled professionals. But I also thing that it might not have been a restriction on the "right to repairs" if warranty had been void if you had tried to repair yourself (and perhaps they do have such a clause as well).
They don't want having to keep producing value to deserve the money, they want to just cash in, indefinitely, like nobles used to do.
I do not own or plan to ever own a Harley Davidson or Westinghouse product. I understand and 100% agree with the right to repair parts. The second part, however, I have a few concerns. So, if I buy a cheap replica part from eBay and put it into my Harley Davidson, it causes other problems with the engine and then I make a warranty claim, they have to honor it?
If your cheap replica part causes issues to the thing you're trying to warranty then yes. If you replace the headlights with crappy clones from ebay, and Chevy says your warranty is void on your transmission, no.
The onus is on warrantor to prove third party components caused damage.
That all being said, it's the top comment at this point
They were an absolute dream to work on. Everything was straightforward and consistent. The assembly was well thought out to enable in the field repairs. In my mind at the time John Deere was a brand that understood the needs of farmers.
I can't reconcile their current position on right to repair with my experience. Something clearly changed between the 1970s and today.
Every harley ive owned, every single one, has required at least a cursory knowledge of how to fix issues as they arise. youll need to learn to replace pegs, grips, and bars as the chrome and fitment of all these components on the sportster is just trash. youll need to learn how the oiler works on the dyna because well, it doesnt and youre going to be installing some aftermarket parts to get it to where it needs to be. youll learn the springs in the clutch plates are trash, plastic drive shoes that require frequent service, and youll need to be pretty good at replacing not one, but three separate types of oil (not just the sump tank.)
to "limit" my right to repair also implies Motor Company is in any capacity interested in honoring the warranty, which they are not. it implies a shop that doesnt have a 3 week lead time after COVID, it implies a competent shop that wont send you back with more problems than you came in with, and above all else it implies a shop that isnt going to nickle and dime you for repairs under warranty to a $30k bike that you had to pay to tow into the garage from some armpit like blythe or tuskaloosa.
I cant stress this enough: the aftermarket is and has been the only thing that kept my harley harem running from 2001 to 2015 before i switched to Yamaha. there are dozens of small mom and pop machine shops like low brow customs and loser machine shop that have parts for your harley that are not only available, but miles better than anything motor company can think to put out.
The three oils? Yes, that's a Harley. That's what they have: three oil pans, all separate. If you do not want that, do not buy a Harley.
If another system / design is better engineering doesn't come to the table. Harley-Davidson is upfront in: three oils. If you want a Harley, you get three oils (unleas you get a Vrod, or a Sportster, or one of the new Pan America or Sportsters with the new Revolution Max motor).
Their V-twin design is not only a shit engine - but it generates so much vibration that it literally shakes itself and everything on the bike to death, causing stuff to fatigue/wear/rattle loose, wiring to fray, you name it.
H-D dealerships are cash cows between that and insane accessory and clothing sales. They're basically Boomer cosplay stores.
Actually kind of sad, I know someone who makes $70k a year and rides a $50k Harley. They will finance anyone...sky is the limit. The marketing is such that you get sucked in with a $15k bike and they are setup to continually trade in and up...anytime. Racket on unsophisticated people.
It's almost laughable to say that about most of their bikes past the introduction of the Evolution in 1984. Their latest engine is as about as smooth as a V-Twin can get.
The years under AMF ownership were bad quality-wise.
And word didn't get around? Hmmmmmm......
The only overlap is getting hold of the manuals. Bike manufacturers have started to put them online only, like car manufacturers, and charge for access. That's a pain in the neck.
HD is a prime example of one of these brands. HD has been running brand loyalty fumes for decades.
They will also refuse to service the car or do bodywork on it (and they are the only place you can get bodywork for a Tesla done, I believe, as Tesla refuses to make bodyparts available), stop providing over the air updates (a violation of federal law, I believe), disable supercharger network access (and in the US, that means no fast charging whatsoever, as Tesla only sells a CCS 1 adapter in South Korea, and US cars lack the software to talk to a CCS charger), and turn off features that the owner had "purchased."
Richrepairs has found that they are quite arbitrary about when they declare a vehicle "totaled", and there's no recourse (except via civil court, I guess?)
To head the inevitable responses off at the pass, such as "well it's got that incredibly dangerous high voltage stuff, they have a duty to make sure it doesn't start a fire or kill someone":
* no other automaker requires VIN numbers for authorization purposes. You can walk into any car dealership and ask for a part number, and get it.
* no other automaker makes it their business to declare their vehicles road-worthy or not. No car manufacturer bothers to maintain such records except maybe for recall notification purposes, or tracking historical vehicles (such as non-road-legal, factory-built race cars for which there will eventually be heritage)
* no other automaker makes parts sales contingent on whether the vehicle is road-worthy or not. Or even if such a vehicle exists. GM, Ford, Dodge, and numerous other automakers will in fact sell you "crate" engines for whatever purpose you want. Again, no questions asked.
...all that, for vehicles that use a carcinogenic, poisonous, highly flammable fuel called "gasoline" which readily generates highly flammable, heavier-than-air vapors.
Or, for that matter, for their electric vehicles. A number of which use twice the voltage Teslas do.
edit: I'm an idiot. I read the comment as being about Harley Davidson.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/04/apples-self-service-r...
Possibly this was just to head off this kind of enforcement aimed their way.
If one human can repair it, so can other humans. They can argue “safety” all day but there is nothing magical about certification.
[0] https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/328610-new-dmca-exemptio...
However, instead, Tesla just won't sell you parts. Either "hard" ("sorry, we show that VIN number as no longer road worthy") or soft ("that part is back ordered")
I'm not aware of a case of Tesla ignoring Magnuson Moss to deny a repair.
Although the limiting of supercharging and other DCFC on salvage vehicles has been a problem. I'd like to see something done about that, but I'm not sure if there's a law that applies.
People don't always understand me when I make this argument. We aren't just talking about fixing your own Tesla in your driveway. We're talking about your certified master mechanic that has more qualifications than an average tesla tech fixing it at their independent shop.
A bigger issue is that some shops don't like to deal with the risks of lifting a car with a battery. Poor lift procedures can cost them a lot of money, and some avoid the liability. Most have reported success with Discount Tire, Costco, and other normal shops, though.
