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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

I think their argument is usually that they shouldn't have to provide support for people putting consumables that they don't have any quality control over into their machines.

Which seems reasonable to me?

You could say that they should just invalidate the warranty, but can you invalidate a statutory warranty?

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I think their unpublished argument is that they can make money by forcing people to use their own filters by making the argument publicly that they shouldn't have to provide support for people putting consumables that they don't have any quality control over into their machines.

That seems a little uncharitable.

It seems about as charitable as a profit driven corporation, which was being evaluated.

On a less snarky note: We've been repeatedly shown that companies act in their own self interest, and put out as cover reasons that are more socially acceptable.

But also, I think "restricting consumer choice because their warranty wouldn't cover it" is a terrible reason, and shouldn't be socially acceptable.

I have a hard time believing that GE has been dealing with a lot of warranty claims because people are using after market filters. Couple that with that a filter that runs more than 2x the off-brand one runs, and it looks a lot like a money grab.

You can’t even really get genuine warranty claims addressed. There’s always a catch: labor not included, part in order, no fridge for 4 days until tech can return.

> You could say that they should just invalidate the warranty, but can you invalidate a statutory warranty?

In the US a manufacturer can not invalidate a warranty for arbitrary reasons, they must prove that the owner's use or modification was the primary cause of a failure.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty...

Imagine if you had to fill your car at a Toyota Certified gas station or it wouldn't run.

Who knows what's in that gas? It could explode!

Well my car does specify a quality of fuel that I should use, but it's a standard with (I guess) precise chemical makeup that you can verify and an industry that cares about it. I'm not sure there are any standards for filter construction?

Even if there were, should it matter? You could fill your car with moonshine and attempt to run it. It might explode, sure, but the car doesn't detect that the fuel is not the specified quality and decide to not run entirely.

Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act prohibits this behavior. This is what allowed a competitive market for affordable replacement car parts to exist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty...

While certainly there will be extreams where the manufacturer shouldn't be liable for shoddy third party components, in general it seems to me that they should be liable if their product is so delicate that it cannot use an average third party component

> Which seems reasonable to me?

It doesn't seem reasonable to me at all, honestly. What sort of damage could a water filter do that would cost them so much?

This looks purely like a move to take their customers for all they're worth.

Refrigerator filters have a giant markup. They're a textbook case of an overpriced, short-life consumable.

You can buy much cheaper filters on Amazon that go on the water line, that last much longer.

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