Comment by penguin_booze | Hacker News Reader

Comment by penguin_booze | Hacker News Reader

I had to get a couple of appliances repaired recently. The handy man charges a minimum of 50 GBP per hour. Established and organized business charge upwards of 100 as a call-out charge alone (parts extra). If it's a non-trivial electronic repair, the spare would cost 150+ (and they're allowed to mark up prices as they please). Now add all that up, and a sweet 20% VAT on top, and voila, that's nearly how much a new one costs, plus it comes with n years of warranty; even better, I get the opportunity buy extended warranty. What I didn't mention is the waiting time for someone to visit in the first place.

Essentially, it's economical and sensible to get at most one repair on an appliance done. If it's an appliance on which you depend daily, you might not be in a position to wait to get it repaired.

Solution: get a new one. Nearly same cost; no wait; new features. Plus, they'll also take away your old one, and may even give you a discount.

Summary: I'm skeptical this changes anything.

But if you can do it yourself, the economics change dramatically.

I'm not sure what the proposed law changes in this respect. I've fixed boilers, phones, computers, TVs, dishwashers and washing machines to varying degrees without call-out costs. Part availability has never really been an issue.

That's great, but companies are taking direct actions to make this more difficult or even illegal.

Try to repair your tractor, or the software in an older phone/tablet/tv. The software will actively prevent it, and if you break that digital lock you've broken the law in a lot of places.

And that's where this law seems to help best, squashing those sorts of hardware EULAs that forbid the user fixing them.

I'd put money on this not fixing all those problems though. Many markets have moved to non-ownership models (eg long lease) to keep people from reusing and repairing older models of things. No rights if it's not yours.

Still, if this means that I get access to first party smartphone parts, all the better. Third party screens are cheap, but they're awful too.

I have to wonder - was repairing (rather than replacing) appliances cheaper in the past? If so, is there a clear cause on why repair prices have changed?

Appliances are comparatively cheaper now because production has been moved to low-wage countries. And also because of productivity increases from automation.

It's harder to move the repair to low-wage countries or to automate it.

Not necessarily cheaper but much easier. Plus, it was convenient as new appliances were quite a lot more expensive (and may I add much more durable).

Nowadays trying to repair an appliance you run into all sorts of issues like missing schematics (and it's much harder to make out what does what on a logic board of a washing machine for example), low parts availability + serialized parts + firmware locks (this is mostly Apple though).

My issue is that new stuff doesn't really seem to be made to last. My last washing machine lasted exactly warranty + 7 days. Meanwhile, mum still has a washing machine close to 30 years old which still works great (with some repairs every few years with super cheap parts). And nowadays it's mostly plastic with a dash of metal instead of the other way around (unless you like moving the washing machine every week the "but it's lighter" argument is moot)

Significantly. A 1952 washing machine cost $300 back then. That had the buying power of about $3k now.

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