Warranty void if removed stickers are illegal | Hacker News Reader

Warranty void if removed stickers are illegal

motherboard.vice.com

15 pointsquadrangle18 comments

Hooray, this is finally starting to get some attention!

It really grinds my gears how "voiding your warranty" has become coined as a tinkerer badge of honor, even though one is doing no such thing. In the case of something with GPL components like Android, some modification is even expressly granted!

Having said that, the stickers themselves aren't illegal. They fall under a backwards legal principle that adversaries can purposely mislead you without consequence.

> Having said that, the stickers themselves aren't illegal. They fall under a backwards legal principle that adversaries can purposely mislead you without consequence.

Except, as the article (and the FTC official quoted therein) states, the law in question (the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act) actually does prohibits various deceptive implications which the stickers can reasonably be viewed as conveying.

I do now see the relevant clauses of the Act, and see how they could imply as such (although said sticker isn't actually referencing any brand). But obviously lawyers from most major electronics companies seem to disagree, at least in expected value terms.

>In the case of something with GPL components like Android, some modification is even expressly granted!

Is it? My understanding is that GPLv2 only requires that the source code be available, not that the user can replace the software on their device.

GPLv3 does have some "anti-tivoization" protections, but I am not aware of it going so far as to provide require warrenties to be extended to modified versions.

> You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it

The copy of the program is residing on flash memory, so modification of those bits is expressly allowed.

What the GPL2 is lacking is any explicit guarantee that the final system will execute that modified code (although I personally think any signing keys fall under "installation scripts", and wish some Linux contributors would step up to the plate).

> In the case of something with GPL components like Android, some modification is even expressly granted!

The GPL granting permission to make the change (so that it is not creating an unauthorized derivative work in violation of copyright) does not guarantee that doing so does not void your warranty to the extent that the law of the applicable jurisdiction allows manufacturers to set conditions for voiding warranties.

What is a manufacturer to do when someone opens a device that functions as advertised, zaps it through a careless electrostatic discharge, puts it back together and gets free warranty service?

Well, that manufacturer has to raise prices (or invest in even more involved ways of detecting damage, or in hardening the electronics against ESD, all of which cost more). This harms those that don't want to mess with their devices.

There is no such thing as a free lunch...

That "free lunch" is the inherent difficulty of performing diagnostics on a failed device. I'd say the manufacturer is in the better position to test their devices and make their devices conducive to such testing, rather than putting the onus onto the consumer to prove the contrary.

Furthermore, the situation you describe is going to be such a small fraction of cases that manufacturers are likely not going to even worry about it.

Furthermore, the situation you describe is going to be such a small fraction of cases that manufacturers are likely not going to even worry about it.

I hate to leave it at disagreeing on facts, but at this juncture, I have to. This is not a rare case at all!

Surely if it's so common, then manufacturers have already had to devise methods for diagnosing such negligent damage beyond canary stickers that will fall off during normal wear.

Are you suggesting that there's some underground scene of consumers intentionally zapping their electronic devices and then demanding warranty service all the while twirling their moustaches in the manner of a Snidely Whiplash.

Maybe that is what the law happens to say now, but it isn't necessarily what the law should be.

Ideally, manufacturers have a right to sell what they want, under terms that they want. Buyers have a right to choose among the best available options on the market, or to not buy at all. Maybe this wouldn't lead to outcomes that the author wants, but then again, he's free to show that all of the other companies are doing it wrong by starting his own company!

So let's allow other people vote with their dollars, rather trying to suppose what customers want and then forcing everyone to comply.

Customers should have a reasonable expectation about what they can and cannot do with a device without consulting a lawyer first. A lot of consumer protection laws are there to ensure, that a company with very tricky lawyers cannot put customers at a disadvantage. While future customers might be able to vote with their money, those customers, who "find out" about unacceptable conditions after having spent their money, need protection too. Especially with common business terms like "warranty" the law should very clearly set boundaries for the conditions.

Personally as someone who makes purchases, I'm entirely in favor of consumer protection laws and the strengthening and enforcement of same.

The concept of "voting with one's dollars" or "letting the market decide" is predicated on all parties having perfect information, i.e. everyone understands all laws, including this one. Naturally, this is rarely true in practice, hence the need for consumer protection laws.

We're not living in the early 1970s anymore. Nowadays, if you want to dig into something, you're just a search away from deep knowledge about whatever you want.

Learning is an inherently individual process, and it requires time and effort on the part of the learner. Just think back to when you were in school - we'll never all be equal in terms of what we know.

(I shouldn't have to say this, but yes, it should be illegal to do things like sell a cake with an actual bomb inside it or something. Doing that is just plain murder, which is an entirely different phenomenon from what we're talking about here, which is whether or not a company has to honor a warranty for a device which the customer has tampered with in violation of contract.)

Why should the range of options for those that avail themselves of information be limited for the benefit of those that do not?

It is not a reasonable expectation that consumers be aware of every law that may be applicable to a purchase. If we had to do that, we'd either have time for nothing else, or be lawyers.

The type of acts that the MMWA prohibites that are addressed in the article are not merely exploitations of insufficiently-cautious customers, but are mechanisms for leveraging market power in the market in which the original device is sold in order to monopolize associated markets (such as the markets for repairs and accessories for devices in the original market.)

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