EU and the right to repair

[Phse0]

Quote

The European Union has adopted new rules that should make it easier to repair your old household appliances in the future. The new Ecodesign Directive, which BBC News reports manufacturers will have to obey starting in 2021, will force firms to make spare parts available for up to a decade for common appliances, including refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers, and televisions.

 

It seems like the EU forces tech companies to provide spare parts. And even Firmware updates for Servers.

 

Quote

A FAQ produced by the European Commission highlights some of the new requirements. Manufacturers will need to provide spare parts for seven years for refrigerators and 10 years for washing machines and dishwashers, for example. Spare parts will also need to be provided within 15 working days, and they need to be replaceable using commonly available tools and without permanently damaging the appliance. iFixit adds that servers will also be covered by the legislation, with a requirement that manufacturers provide firmware updates for eight years after production.

It’s about to get a lot easier to repair old appliances in the EU

[MeinGottWalther]

8 minutes ago, Phse0 said:

 

It seems like the EU forces tech companies to provide spare parts. And even Firmware updates for Servers.

 

It’s about to get a lot easier to repair old appliances in the EU

probably also depends on how many of these products they sell, i doubt a small company which sells under 1000 units per year will be included in the regulation

[LAwLz]

Haven't read the directive yet but from what I can tell this seems like a good step in the right direction.

It shouldn't be too difficult for manufacturers to keep spare parts for 10 years if they start consolidating their part portfolio. I wouldn't be surprised if they are already reusing lots of parts in several models. I think the big problem will be some parts which gets outdated quickly. I don't think the design of compressors for refrigerators will change a lot from 2021 to 2031, so it shouldn't be too hard to reuse and restock those. But the SoC in things like TVs will be severely outdated and hard to get after 10 years. Imagine trying to buy the SoC to the original Galaxy S phone today. Those things haven't been made in years. I see that being a pretty big challenge for the TV sector.

[greenhorn]

I am in favour of those new rules. I have just recently repaired my parents' dishwasher using spare parts ordered from the manufacturer's webshop and amazon and it is working again. Although the spare parts were a bit expensive, having those available saved a lot of money and effort and prolonged the dishwasher's life (by a substantial amount of time, I hope).

In my opinion, the availability of spare parts makes sense for household appliances that are easy to repair. If a professional is required to be able to do the repair, I expect the costs to quickly become almost as high as those of a new appliance. In that case, the only plus would be some saved ressources I guess.

[DrMacintosh]

Who are the major producers of appliances in the EU? 

[RejZoR]

2 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Who are the major producers of appliances in the EU? 

Bosch, Siemens, Beko, Gorenje, Liebherr, Indesit, Electrolux, SMEG...

[Kilrah]

2 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Who are the major producers of appliances in the EU? 

Itt applies to anything that's sold in the EU, doesn't need to be manufactured in the EU. 

 

Quote

EU ecodesign measures only apply to products placed on the Union market, independently of where they are manufactured. 

 

[Taf the Ghost]

The rules around this type of stuff matters a whole lot. Classically, the more things are made out of plastics, the harder these rules are to make work. Also, rather directly, this does act as both an innovation and competitive dis-incentiviser. This isn't necessarily a big hurdle in really mature markets (you can still rebuild entire 1980s cars from OEM-spec parts if you really want to, for instance), but anything that uses near-leading edge silicon nodes is a big question mark. Enough that would cause businesses to make fairly different decisions that might not be best for anyone except their ability to avoid fines if they can't supply something in 8 years.

[Thaldor]

2 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Who are the major producers of appliances in the EU? 

Doesn't matter. The new rules apply to any product placed on the Union market, meaning it doesn't matter who or where manufactures and imports the product, as long as it's sold in the EU they must follow the rules.

 

At first not providing spare parts will only affect products ecodesign label (that from A to G grading how ecofriendly some product is) but that label has always been a bit more: getting from G to A doesn't require a lot of work but the real work is done to even get the G rating because the criteria is revised every year and with most product categories the G bar is slightly over the average quality of the last years products in that category excluding A graded. This means the product that last year got something like F or D grade would be banned from sales the next year (single products have something like 2-4 years between regrading, but usually that isn't needed because ). Now that not providing spare parts lowers the ecodesign grade means that within few years that might start to lower the score so much that even otherwise full A grade product might be banned because the manufacturer doesn't provide spare parts unlike others.

[minibois]

That's awesome!

Let's hope this will stretch out to small(er) electronics as well. Can't count the amount of times I had to order spare parts from China, because the manufacturer just does not have any items available..

Not to mention let's hope the manufacturers have their small parts at reasonable prices.

 

Recently I repaired a wheel on a relative's vacuum. This wheel would have costed 30 euros (!!!!!), but in the end two nuts and a bolt did the trick too. The spare part would have just been a piece of plastic too..

 

3 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Who are the major producers of appliances in the EU? 

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

Bosch, Siemens, Beko, Gorenje, Liebherr, Indesit, Electrolux, SMEG...

Philips, Miele, AEG, Tefal..

There is even companies like Krups and De'Longhi if you count coffee machines as (small) appliances.

[Guest]

Where this becomes difficult for manufacturers are when third party components are used inside a server. For instance, Our (Fujitsu) servers often use third party network and RAID controller cards. Quite often we build a stock of these but it is very hard to gauge how quickly they will run out. Manufacturers of these cards would probably not be covered by the legislation, that also tend to have relatively short sales life. In some EU countries such as France for instance, warehousing spare parts comes at a high tax burden. I think it will all become very complicated and costly if the legislation is not carefully considered for different product types.

[Thaldor]

26 minutes ago, Phill104 said:

Where this becomes difficult for manufacturers are when third party components are used inside a server. For instance, Our (Fujitsu) servers often use third party network and RAID controller cards. Quite often we build a stock of these but it is very hard to gauge how quickly they will run out. Manufacturers of these cards would probably not be covered by the legislation, that also tend to have relatively short sales life. In some EU countries such as France for instance, warehousing spare parts comes at a high tax burden. I think it will all become very complicated and costly if the legislation is not carefully considered for different product types.

Spare part doesn't mean that part should be exactly the same. Like my cars cooling pump cracked which was a manufacturing defect (quite common in my car model) and it got replaced with cooling pump made for newer model because that's probably far more easier for Toyota compared to stocking old cooling pumps. It's more manufacturers choice whether they want to stock million different parts that do the exact same thing but are different just because some mumbo jumbo reason, or they can just start designing things more compatible and save a lot of space because they don't need to store that many different parts. Like what stops Fujitsu from replacing that RAID card with a newer as long as it's compatible (prices are probably around the same) and replenish the stocks with newer models as the newer server is released and the old stock is running low?

[GOTSpectrum]

6 hours ago, Phse0 said:

 

It seems like the EU forces tech companies to provide spare parts. And even Firmware updates for Servers.

 

It’s about to get a lot easier to repair old appliances in the EU

Rip Brexit

[Guest]

42 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

Spare part doesn't mean that part should be exactly the same. Like my cars cooling pump cracked which was a manufacturing defect (quite common in my car model) and it got replaced with cooling pump made for newer model because that's probably far more easier for Toyota compared to stocking old cooling pumps. It's more manufacturers choice whether they want to stock million different parts that do the exact same thing but are different just because some mumbo jumbo reason, or they can just start designing things more compatible and save a lot of space because they don't need to store that many different parts. Like what stops Fujitsu from replacing that RAID card with a newer as long as it's compatible (prices are probably around the same) and replenish the stocks with newer models as the newer server is released and the old stock is running low?

Particularly with certain network cards it is not as easy as it sounds. Mainframes are a prime example. It is not a trivial exercise to change the card they contain. If you can there are other external servers that may connect to it. For various reasons they may have compatibility lists which are sometimes not easy to have updated to newer model cards. There may be a third party mass storage device connected and both ends need to have network cards in the compatibility list. Interlinks between customer sites may be limited in speed, sometimes just 1G fibre. Not all newer SFPs and Network cards support those lower speed so it may require the customer to upgrade their link. Here in the UK the network infrastructure owned by third parties is not always as good as it should be* so may not be able to take more than 1gb. There are may gotchas that could make it more of a pain than it may at first seem.

 

* I work in London but. We still cannot get fibre broadband in our office ffs. Just 500 meters from a main underground station and the fastest broadband we get is about 5mb. It’s absolutely insane.

[Guest]

43 minutes ago, GOTSpectrum said:

Rip Brexit

I certainly hope so. The whole sorry saga of Brexit should never have been started. I don’t care who calls me a remoaner, we are better together.

[mr moose]

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Haven't read the directive yet but from what I can tell this seems like a good step in the right direction.

It shouldn't be too difficult for manufacturers to keep spare parts for 10 years if they start consolidating their part portfolio. I wouldn't be surprised if they are already reusing lots of parts in several models. I think the big problem will be some parts which gets outdated quickly. I don't think the design of compressors for refrigerators will change a lot from 2021 to 2031, so it shouldn't be too hard to reuse and restock those. But the SoC in things like TVs will be severely outdated and hard to get after 10 years. Imagine trying to buy the SoC to the original Galaxy S phone today. Those things haven't been made in years. I see that being a pretty big challenge for the TV sector.

 

I imagine this will be very much like current laws in Australia for the automotive industry,  the law is 10 years for replacement parts, but depending on the model, type of part and relative value of the car,  the market itself tends to resolve most issues commendably (in that no one wants to replace the engine in a 10 year old car if it is cheaper to buy another car instead).   I imagine no one would want to replace the SoC in a 7 year old phone,  but if they did the cost of getting the parts (fairly for all parties) might easily outweigh the benefit of just buying a new phone,  so while the option exist to get the parts it may not burden the manufacturer as such. 

 

To the thread in general, this I feel is a good move,  customers are being pushed in the wrong direction with modern technology and the ability to repair or modify their own stuff.  The idea that I have a $600 ipad sitting in the corner gathering dust because I have to take apple to consumer affairs to get it fixed is wholly aggravating (and that's with the law on my side). If more countries adopt laws like this it won't be long before no one has to listen to their BS when trying to get your shit fixed.

 

 

[Monkey Dust]

40 minutes ago, GOTSpectrum said:

Rip Brexit

To be fair we are still going to get EU spec products. Manufactures aren't going to bother with a unique un-repairable spec just for us.

 

Of course we may not be able buy new appliances after Brexit anyway. Bartering for rat meat with 'shiny things from the before times' may work with Geoff down the street, but is likely less enticing to Bosch.

 

On a less brexity note; A more serious problem than lack of parts availability is security updates ceasing for connected devices after a couple of years. It might be best if I can't repair my fridge if it's riddled with malware and part of a botnet.

[Thaldor]

18 minutes ago, Phill104 said:

Particularly with certain network cards it is not as easy as it sounds. Mainframes are a prime example. It is not a trivial exercise to change the card they contain. If you can there are other external servers that may connect to it. For various reasons they may have compatibility lists which are sometimes not easy to have updated to newer model cards. There may be a third party mass storage device connected and both ends need to have network cards in the compatibility list. Interlinks between customer sites may be limited in speed, sometimes just 1G fibre. Not all newer SFPs and Network cards support those lower speed so it may require the customer to upgrade their link. Here in the UK the network infrastructure owned by third parties is not always as good as it should be* so may not be able to take more than 1gb. There are may gotchas that could make it more of a pain than it may at first seem.

 

* I work in London but. We still cannot get fibre broadband in our office ffs. Just 500 meters from a main underground station and the fastest broadband we get is about 5mb. It’s absolutely insane.

Those are the problems companies will be facing (not as bad as in IT but mainly TVs from the list that these changes will apply). They won't apply to anything older but in the future companies must think what is their strategy in the future: Keep going as they are going (I have quite many examples of home appliances that have just dickhead design which is done just because "reasons" (mostly on coffee makers, like how hard it is to use the same filter holder for a more than one coffee maker model? Talking about Electrolux which just keeps moving plastic holder parts from place to place to make the filter holder incompatible with other Electrolux coffee makers), or do something more intelligent and less greedy.

If this was extended to IT it would be kind of mixed bag. On the other hand there already is companies who make things a lot more compatible and then there are companies that have problems even getting 1 and 0 to be compatible in binary. This now doesn't concern IT, but this could probably be something that is kind of needed. Like EU isn't directly saying that everything from the past and in the future must have spare parts but everything new incoming must have if the industry so chooses (if majority of companies don't start stocking spare parts the hit in the ecograde will be a lot smaller, probably insignificant because average company isn't offering spare parts, but if majority of companies offer spare parts those who don't even need to make the difference elsewhere (like using renewable materials, more eco friendly factories, better and easier recycling and so on) or hope that the amount of companies offering spare parts doesn't rise so much that not offering spare parts might mean that their product can't get the minimum G rating). Like the forever fight between Intel and AMD, I personally choose AMD some years ago just because if I fry my CPU or my MB decided to die, I don't need to right there and then buy both, I can stick Ryzen2 or even Ryzen3 to my X370 MB or if my MB dies I can stick my Ryzen 1700 to X470 MB both cases I cannot use the newer gear fully but it will work unlike Intel still using the LGA1511 socket and it's just one or max two generations of CPUs that work with the MB chipset while the change in reality is just one or two pins in different places which may or may not even do anything else than just be dicks.

What I'm saying is that it's not impossible for companies to make compatible solutions, even less when they now have couple of years time to think, that can last decade while changing but not making things too incompatible, especially wearing parts. It just that many companies don't want to do that because they want money and repairing shit doesn't bring as much as selling new shit.

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, Thaldor said:

Talking about Electrolux which just keeps moving plastic holder parts from place to place to make the filter holder incompatible with other Electrolux coffee makers), or do something more intelligent and less greedy.

 

 

I do believe that is the driving force behind such laws as these. Not only do companies obsolete products unnecessarily making people buy more, but the waste and environmental impacts must be costing the economy a chunk.  It's fine in countries like Australia where they just doze the shit into the ground because we have plenty of space (for now), but smaller EU countries can't just landfill anymore and sending shit to the ever shrinking Chinese recycling industry is costing more (plus if you're a true environmentalist you'd be very concerned with how the Chinese can afford to recycle everyone else's waste in an environmentally friendly way).

[ARikozuM]

6 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Bosch, Siemens, Beko, Gorenje, Liebherr, Indesit, Electrolux, SMEG...

Of these, I know Bosch, Siemens, Electrolux, and Liebherr. 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

 

I do believe that is the driving force behind such laws as these. Not only do companies obsolete products unnecessarily making people buy more, but the waste and environmental impacts must be costing the economy a chunk.  It's fine in countries like Australia where they just doze the shit into the ground because we have plenty of space (for now), but smaller EU countries can't just landfill anymore and sending shit to the ever shrinking Chinese recycling industry is costing more (plus if you're a true environmentalist you'd be very concerned with how the Chinese can afford to recycle everyone else's waste in an environmentally friendly way).

I am sure that is a big part of the driving force behind this. We need as a race to be far less wasteful and more conscious of the crap we are putting into the environment. We have become a throw away society very rapidly since TV diners were introduced in the late 70s. Almost everything electronic is not repaired, but thrown into landfill. It has to stop as you say, and big companies need to stop putting profit ahead of their duties to the planet. There are many ways to keep profits up without building obsolescence into everything. Not reusable coffee pods are a prime example of a society that has become irresponsibly lazy.

[williamcll]

Will other manufacturers with companies in EU have to follow this law as well?

[Anomnomnomaly]

12 hours ago, Phse0 said:

 

It seems like the EU forces tech companies to provide spare parts. And even Firmware updates for Servers.

 

It’s about to get a lot easier to repair old appliances in the EU

 

It's all well and good saying that... but have you seen what they charge for some of those spare parts?

 

I had a washer/dryer machine that was 9yrs old and still going strong... A good brand.. but it had these rubber membrane buttons for selecting a lot of the options... and they wore out. I made some minor repairs... soaked the rubber keys in warm water and made them a little more pliable again. Applied some of that graphite stuff to improve contacts and made it last a little longer.

 

But in the end, 30% of the buttons no longer worked. So I went to buys the spare parts I needed... 3 little bits of rubber and the backplate... was going to cost almost £200 on a machine that I only paid £350 brand new 10yrs earlier.

 

It simply wasn't worth it when you can pick up a basic washing machine for the same money.

 

In the end I was given a separate washer and dryer after my uncle passed away, he'd only bought them the year before...

 

So right to repair is a good thing, but not if they price gouge on parts to make repairing it uneconomical so that people still have to buy a replacement.

 

Oh and that dryer I got given... turned out to be one of the dangerous Indesit ones that caused fires... so I had to get that modified by the manufacturer to stop the possibility of it happening. But I clean my dryer out before each use, so no build up of dust and fibres to cause it... gotta be safe when using them regardless of make.

[Anomnomnomaly]

1 hour ago, Phill104 said:

I am sure that is a big part of the driving force behind this. We need as a race to be far less wasteful and more conscious of the crap we are putting into the environment. We have become a throw away society very rapidly since TV diners were introduced in the late 70s. Almost everything electronic is not repaired, but thrown into landfill. It has to stop as you say, and big companies need to stop putting profit ahead of their duties to the planet. There are many ways to keep profits up without building obsolescence into everything. Not reusable coffee pods are a prime example of a society that has become irresponsibly lazy.

 

I used to be really wasteful, I never recycled anything I would throw away electrical goods at the drop of a hat... I was rebuilding and upgrading my PC's 2-3 times a year. Every time I bought a new HDD I doubled the capacity, same for memory... at one point I built 3 systems completely in 18 months.

 

But money was plentiful, then the crash happened in 08 and I had to learn to be far more careful... My systems started lasting me 4yrs and I started buying 2nd hand stuff for upgrades... recycling components into other systems (my media server gets my old stuff and my mum's system gets that stuff). Until Jan this year I hadn't built a brand new system from scratch in 10yrs.

 

I repaired my old phone and passed that on to my mum, I recycle as much as I can now... both household and electrical... I donate clothes to charity and I do volunteer work for a parkinsons charity (my late father had it) where I help others with their tech problems as well as the running of the monthly meetings.

 

I try very hard not to buy pointless things... But I'm not immune to new toys either... this year I bought a new TV for the bedroom as my old one was 11yrs old and only 720p... that one will be used in the guest room. I picked up a bluetooth speaker for the kitchen/diner for music as my old stereo system gave up after 15yrs.

 

In my lounge.. my 5.1 surround system is almost 20yrs old... and still going strong... granted it has no HDMI throughput and doesn't do DTS.MA or Dolby ATMOS... and audio is over optical or digital coaxial. But it works. In my office the speakers are the old Yamaha ones from that system (I picked up some JBL's from a friend used) on a second hand Sony 7.1 amp... and my new second hand car has an ipod dock... so I'm looking for a second hand ipod for music (it has BT but not BT streaming, phone only).

 

So yeah.. I do my part now... I could do more... but occasionally I still want something 'shiny' to play with.

 

Here in the UK you can also use a thing called Freecycle.. if you've got stuff you no longer want, offer it up to others rather than throw it out... I got given a nice Delonghi convection oven/microwave/grill by a friend of the family when I bought my house... so I donated my small microwave to some one else in need.

 

I've recycled furniture... they call it upcycling here... not a fan of the term... basically I took an old pine sideboard and some side/end table/units (that horrible varnish that goes orange with age) and painted them and fitted new handles... they're now bedroom furniture in my spare room.

 

We all need to do more, we all need to convince others to do more... if I could avoid using the car I would but I'm partially disabled and the bus stop is too far away for me to walk and taxis too expensive. But I've cut my car use down from 200 miles a week to around 100, sometimes less... I used to average 10-12000  miles a year, now I average less than 6k.

 

Just a few small changes... switching out bulbs for LED's when the blow, turning of appliances when not in use buying more efficient items when you have to replace things that break and can't be fixed.... by modifying habits... my electricity bill has remained roughly the same for the last 7yrs even though prices have risen.

 

OK.. this turned into a little bit of a preachy post...

 

tl:dr... do more, recycle more.. don't be so wasteful and convince others to do the same.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, williamcll said:

Will other manufacturers with companies in EU have to follow this law as well?

Depends what they manufacture, but if they want to sell in the EU, then yes ^o^