FTC Says 'Warranty Void If Removed' Stickers Are Bullshit, Warns Manufacturers They're Breaking the Law

[mr moose]

9 hours ago, asus killer said:

imagine that you are the cause of the problem, drop the graphics card and break the fan, only the fan the rest is fine. You could either have to deal with warranty delays, shipping costs, a much more expensive repair (like 10 times the cost or more) or you can go to some store next to you that repairs that really cheap on the same day. He may have to remove warranty stickers.

Should that void the warranty for the rest of the card? even if you break a damn sticker?

 

 

If you drop it then it's your fault it's broken.  Sometimes you just have too accept the fact that getting things fixed under warranty is a pain in the arse.  Inconvenience should not be a reason to force a company to warrant other peoples work.  

[Neokolzia]

Does this also cover the right to modify products like in case of installing waterblocks on GPU's?

 

As many manufacturers void warranty if you do so

[mr moose]

18 minutes ago, Neokolzia said:

Does this also cover the right to modify products like in case of installing waterblocks on GPU's?

 

As many manufacturers void warranty if you do so

If I read it right then yes it does.  The article clearly sates the act prohibits the “tying” of a consumer good to a certain type of replacement part. this tells me you can user whatever type of part you want. 

[ARikozuM]

59 minutes ago, Neokolzia said:

As many manufacturers void warranty if you do so

Depends on the company. EVGA is known for taking a warranty after water block installation (not from water damage) so long as the user can put the original cooler on before starting the RMA process. 

[Neokolzia]

5 hours ago, mr moose said:

If I read it right then yes it does.  The article clearly sates the act prohibits the “tying” of a consumer good to a certain type of replacement part. this tells me you can user whatever type of part you want. 

I mean thats what basically has bound Car manufacturers for a long time.

 

Like if I install a Exhaust system on a car, and my Suspension goes, unless they can Prove that the exhaust caused the failure of the suspension, they can't deny my warranty claim.  Though when talking about Performance mods and something goes wrong with engine then things get obviously bit more dicey.

 

Wondering how this would go if god knows what happens to a GPU starts artifacting/dying etc, but you had watercooled it.  And how all that would go down, of course could be your fault for say missing a VRM or a RAM chip's thermal sticky stuff.

 

[Neokolzia]

4 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

Depends on the company. EVGA is known for taking a warranty after water block installation (not from water damage) so long as the user can put the original cooler on before starting the RMA process. 

My question more over is, the practice of denying warranty actually unlawful then if I had installed a waterblock.

 

Obviously if the damage is my own fault I should be accountable, but if it wasn't and was just hardware failure it should be still warrantied

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, Neokolzia said:

  Though when talking about Performance mods and something goes wrong with engine then things get obviously bit more dicey.
 

 

This is my issue with forcing companies to honor warranties on modified/repaired products.  Obviously there are open and shut cases where changing the cooler should have no effect on a display port that clearly wasn't soldered properly at the factory.  However there are many examples (djdwosk97 has raised a few) where that can't be determined.   And quite frankly as a consumer when I see that sticker on there that has not been removed or tampered with It gives the manufacturer very little recourse to wiggle out of the repair/replacement.

[asus killer]

11 hours ago, mr moose said:

 

If you drop it then it's your fault it's broken.  Sometimes you just have too accept the fact that getting things fixed under warranty is a pain in the arse.  Inconvenience should not be a reason to force a company to warrant other peoples work.  

why would you consider the company has to warrant other peoples work? of course that should not make sense. But they should warrant their product on the parts that they sold. Just because you cleaned a fan, replaced a fan, etc... why should the rest be warrantless (the fan is just an example)? And why can't someone do a small repair on their own on their product?

Again cars don't work like this and there is no problem.

 

In EU they have 30 days to fix it, no more. But before that it was the wild west of repairs. And still 30 days is a lot if you really need the product and you could repair it yourself of by a 3rd party. Again that should in no way void the warranty. It's up to the company to decide if the repair did any damage and refuse the warranty claim, otherwise they should assume the warranty

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, asus killer said:

why would you consider the company has to warrant other peoples work? of course that should not make sense. But they should warrant their product on the parts that they sold. Just because you cleaned a fan, replaced a fan, etc... why should the rest be warrantless (the fan is just an example)? And why can't someone do a small repair on their own on their product?

Again cars don't work like this and there is no problem.

Because there isn't always a way to know if the work the other person did contributed to the failure or not. As I have said it's fine if it is obviously a manufacturing or design fault unrelated to other repairs/modifications, but that isn't always the case.   Therefore if you force a company to honor warranty after someone else has taken it apart you are effectively forcing them to warrant that work as well.

 

[asus killer]

5 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Because there isn't always a way to know if the work the other person did contributed to the failure or not. As I have said it's fine if it is obviously a manufacturing or design fault unrelated to other repairs/modifications, but that isn't always the case.   Therefore if you force a company to honor warranty after someone else has taken it apart you are effectively forcing them to warrant that work as well.

 

come on it's easy to know if someone soldered something or just replaced a fan, cleaned a heatsink (again the graphics card example), what makes no sense is to say if you remove a sticker then you have no warranty.

Let's agree to disagree.

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, asus killer said:

come on it's easy to know if someone soldered something or just replaced a fan, cleaned a heatsink (again the graphics card example), what makes no sense is to say if you remove a sticker then you have no warranty.

Let's agree to disagree.

Not always, You are concentrating on the most obvious of issues, there are way more complicated repairs being carried out all the time and you have no idea what they did or how they treated it once it was apart.    How do you know the battery was properly disconnected or the screen ribbon was properly handled?  Sometimes all it takes is for a stray screwdriver scraping a fine board trace and that's the end of a phone function.  Good luck proving that was the fault of the repair man if you are the manufacturer. 

[asus killer]

11 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Not always, You are concentrating on the most obvious of issues, there are way more complicated repairs being carried out all the time and you have no idea what they did or how they treated it once it was apart.    How do you know the battery was properly disconnected or the screen ribbon was properly handled?  Sometimes all it takes is for a stray screwdriver scraping a fine board trace and that's the end of a phone function.  Good luck proving that was the fault of the repair man if you are the manufacturer. 

whatever we are talking about the manufacturer has to know what caused the issue even for quality purposes, but i agree that most times its less costly and time efficient to just replace the item and not see what was the problem. But that's the companies problem not the owner. 

My new car had a issue with the window motor, it stopped sometimes, they couldn't car less about what was wrong with it and just replaced it, but the problem was with the wiring so the problem continued. This happens a lot.

 

But even with stickers there are some percentage of bogus warranty claims that go trough, i dropped my pad and the card reader stopped working without any cosmetic visible issues. They fixed it in warranty and still it was me the cause. It's part of warranty, it's not like the sticker changes much. For those small claims that the manufacturer can't really see the "bad repair" i don't think it justifies the sticker thing.

[mr moose]

Just now, asus killer said:

whatever we are talking about the manufacturer has to know what caused the issue even for quality purposes,

That doesn't mean they can actually find the cause.

Just now, asus killer said:

but i agree that most times its less costly and time efficient to just replace the item and not see what was the problem. But that's the companies problem not the owner. 

Damn right it's the companies problem, and what happens when the company is forced to start repairing products that were broken by dodgy corner shops or owners trying to do their own repairs/upgrades?  They  increase the price of the goods to offset it.  What this law effectively does is make us all pay for the warranty repairs to devices that people have had problems not resulting from anything the manufacturer did wrong.

 

Just now, asus killer said:

My new car had a issue with the window motor, it stopped sometimes, they couldn't car less about what was wrong with it and just replaced it, but the problem was with the wiring so the problem continued. This happens a lot.

Now imagine you had tried to improve the speed of the motor and caused the issue but could get them to fix it free anyway because the law said so,  is that fair?

 

Just now, asus killer said:

But even with stickers there are some percentage of bogus warranty claims that go trough, i dropped my pad and the card reader stopped working without any cosmetic visible issues. They fixed it in warranty and still it was me the cause. It's part of warranty, it's not like the sticker changes much. For those small claims that the manufacturer can't really see the "bad repair" i don't think it justifies the sticker thing.

Depends on how many times they have to replace/repair a product that seems to break without any logical cause other than someone tampering with the device.  Manufacturers spend a lot of time working out why their products break, and those "void if removed" stickers didn't come into being solely to avoid warranty obligations.

[asus killer]

@mr moose why doesn't this apply to cars for example. At least in my country (don't know about the rest of the world) we can do the scheduled maintenance outside of the brand (why would someone do it? because it's cheaper) and still keep the warranty by law. You can do the same with a bicycle for example. Don't the same issues you pointed apply? Shouldn't they put a stickers on the cars?

[TechyBen]

On 14/04/2018 at 1:45 PM, djdwosk97 said:

You're right, not all, but many cases are nearly impossible to determine the source of the problem, and that's a very big problem.

So what happens when you were running on carpet in socks and touch the board without discharging yourself and frying something in the process?

Warrenty stickers don't know if it's carpet or dropped.

So this law won't effect that issue.

[79wjd]

2 hours ago, TechyBen said:

Warrenty stickers don't know if it's carpet or dropped.

So this law won't effect that issue.

Many warranty stickers are on the case -- e.g. they prevent you from touching the board.

[TechyBen]

1 minute ago, djdwosk97 said:

Many warranty stickers are on the case -- e.g. they prevent you from touching the board.

What does that have to do with fake claims on static discharge or dropping the entire system? Those things can break it without ever opening the case, and voiding the warranty. Yet are not covered by said warranty. Thus stickers don't actually do much to protect against most common fake claims. They do try to protect against fraudulent ones (swapping internals of iPhone 256gb for an iPhone 16gb and getting a refund ).

[79wjd]

1 hour ago, TechyBen said:

What does that have to do with fake claims on static discharge or dropping the entire system? Those things can break it without ever opening the case, and voiding the warranty. Yet are not covered by said warranty. Thus stickers don't actually do much to protect against most common fake claims. They do try to protect against fraudulent ones (swapping internals of iPhone 256gb for an iPhone 16gb and getting a refund ).

You're right, there is no perfect system but I sure as shit wouldn't have any interest in covering someone else's bullshit -- there's a very good reason why most people wouldn't allow someone to return something they sold on Craigslist. And I'd really love to see you cause ESD damage without being able to touch the board.

 

Warranty void stickers are usually placed where companies have a reasonable expectation for damage to occur, that's why they're sometimes external while other times they're on a specific internal component or access way to certain components.

[mr moose]

11 hours ago, asus killer said:

@mr moose why doesn't this apply to cars for example. At least in my country (don't know about the rest of the world) we can do the scheduled maintenance outside of the brand (why would someone do it? because it's cheaper) and still keep the warranty by law. You can do the same with a bicycle for example. Don't the same issues you pointed apply? Shouldn't they put a stickers on the cars?

They do apply to cars in many countries.  Here in Australia your service book has to be stamped by a qualified mechanic or the warranty can be ruled invalid.  We as consumers have a case to make if the fault has nothing to do with servicing though.  

[Kamina]

I'm with the companies on this.

You can modify your own devices, but you're solely responsible for whatever damage you cause.

 

What they should make illegal is manufactures preventing modifications, such as printers and apple devices. 

[handymanshandle]

Well I wonder if something like a warning sticker saying unauthorized service may void warranty.

I do believe a company has a right to refuse warranty work if unauthorized work has been administered but opening it up and looking to see if there's anything you can do about it or having a company open it up and try to do something should be an option. But, I think for the third party route there should be a way for those third parties to report the service they did to the device, so the manufacturer knows at least a little bit of what kind of work went into the device, of course it's understandable to just want to be sure that no unauthorized shit has happened or whatever but still.

[Godlygamer23]

I've stated this in another thread, but I wonder how this law affects manufacturers of military electronics. At my workplace where we build such things, certain units get the warranty void tamper seals. 

[Okjoek]

On 4/11/2018 at 12:51 AM, DrMacintosh said:

I'm going to go against the tide here again. 

 

if I were a company and I was forced to service people who open their device, break it, and send it back to me and expect me to fix it without knowing what the hell they have done to it and being unable to rule out their hand in breaking the device.....I would not be very happy. 

 

Not so sure how I feel about this. 

I agree with this.

 

Besides I remember a video way back where Linus shows some tips on bypassing warranty stickers with some methods of removing and reapplying them so that it appears untampered, so I mean if someone's THAT desperate to get into something...

[Neokolzia]

6 hours ago, Okjoek said:

I agree with this.

 

Besides I remember a video way back where Linus shows some tips on bypassing warranty stickers with some methods of removing and reapplying them so that it appears untampered, so I mean if someone's THAT desperate to get into something...

Fairly sure AvE made a video on this

[asus killer]

10 hours ago, mr moose said:

They do apply to cars in many countries.  Here in Australia your service book has to be stamped by a qualified mechanic or the warranty can be ruled invalid.  We as consumers have a case to make if the fault has nothing to do with servicing though.  

in the EU as long as the manufacturer specifications are met the warranty stands even if you go to a 3rd party for the schedule maintenance. Like we talked before it's a pain for the manufacturer to see if all the parts and work were up to the standards, but it's their job if they want to deny warranty. It didn't made sense you could only do it in their shops as they would have a monopoly and hike the prices, a bit like the iphone replacement batteries.