Consider if your laptop was paired to it's specific charger and would refuse to charge with any other cable or charger. Lose or break your charger and suddenly your $2000+ laptop is irreparable.
That seems obviously stupid, right? And the sort of thing that ought to be illegal? Well, the headphones are the same, just with a different looking charging cable.
Apple will sell you a replacement left or right airpod, and a replacement case. If you bought all 3 to form a complete product it comes out hardly more expensive than buying a new one so the replacements are fairly priced too.
I have many friends with a laptop that has an issue, just out of warranty. Apple will "repair" it for a LOT, suspiciously like $200 less than a new laptop.
Personally happened to me 2 times.
Because sometimes a free market of unofficial options is better than an exclusive and exorbitant option.
What I suspect they do is take your entire machine in trade, and give you a refurb machine.
Then they take your machine whether barely broken or very broken, fix it up, then add it to the pipeline for the next person. They charge a specific amount for this pipeline (anchored by the price of a new machine).
> I couldn't even contact google
I'm not saying "fix it yourself"[0] but that if I can do it easily a third party can too. One of Apple's biggest problems is they gate their third party repair.
Since Louis Rossman is mentioned there, he's famous for talking about exactly this. Apple has gotten easier to repair and some credit to that goes directly to Rossman, considering he's one of the biggest voices pushing the right to repair movement.
[0] well, we are on HN, so there is a bias here. This isn't a general forum like Reddit. I'd expect most users to be able to fix things themselves, even if they've never done it before.
Are you looking only on apple.com?
Yes.
> And the sort of thing that ought to be illegal?
No, why? As long as you know ahead of time what you are getting, seems fine to me. People are also allowed to buy impractical shoes in stupid colours, and that shouldn't be illegal.
In the same way I like not having to check restaurants are poisoning me, I like knowing my consumer rights are being respected in every other industry.
What's next, banning pineapple on pizza?
> Because it's destroying the planet creating mountains of ewaste.
Don't buy stuff, then? Or in general, ask your legislators for a tax on ewaste?
> And because as a consumer, I don't want to spend a week doing research on every product to make sure they aren't abusing my rights in some confusing way that only shows up years down the line.
Read reviews, or rely on brands that have a reputation to burn, or ask your AI helper to read the fineprint.
Please don't argue in bad faith.
Consenting adults can use contracts and agreements to restrict their later choices. Eg a farmer and a super market can contract today to trade potatoes next year.
Strictly speaking, entering that contract takes away a choice in the future.
Or a car company might offer today to buy back your car in the future for a given price. If you ban that contract, they can still choose to buy back that car in the future, but the customer cannot rely on it today.
Your argument only makes sense in markets with high competition and high information. But those aren't the conditions of the markets today.
You're acting like there is a company that actually provides the things people are complaining about. But people are complaining because they can't buy what they want. So stop arguing in bad faith.
> Eg a farmer and a super market can contract today to trade potatoes next year.
So imagine I have a contract to buy potatoes next year and they all are rotten. You're arguing "well the contract didn't specify that they wouldn't be rotten." What a shitty thing and of course the seller will be sued. There's implicit parts to the contract. Even if you hid in the contract "might be rotten" it's clear that's not in good faith. That has big externalities as people no longer trust potatoes. Which is exactly what we're seeing happening in tech...
> Or in general, ask your legislators for a tax on ewaste?
What, did you expect them to just directly ask their legislators and not try to garner public support? Why would their legislator respond to just some rando? But thousands of people? Different story
> Read reviews, or rely on brands that have a reputation to burn
Earth is much much bigger than you think it is. Even if you care about reducing waste, less then 3% of total waste is ewaste. Ewaste is not destroying the planet.
One of the most common grievances on ConsumerRightsWiki is when the terms of the sale seem to change after you've already purchased the product.
A normal consumer wouldn't assume this to be the default behaviour, and I doubt Bose wrote this (or whatever possible advantage you'd get from this behaviour) on the box or website blurb.
It would literally have cost them less development time to make the headphones without this restriction. And that would be better for the consumer. The only purpose this restriction serves is to make the headphones easier to break (possibly increasing the number of purchases? It's deliberately anti-consumer.
This is exactly one of those places that capitalism doesn't work well and regulation is needed. Businesses would rather have you purchasing a new item every year instead of building something that lasts, but it's dramatically better for society when products are actually good instead of crap.
As an example of this, look up Instant Pot.
I can see why companies would try to sell you a product that breaks, sure. But competitors can point out that their product doesn't break (in case it actually doesn't), and try to win over customers.
https://www.bonappetit.com/story/instant-pot-bankrupt?srslti...
Generically, yeah there's some markets where that works alright. For example, I don't think the car industry is unhealthy in this way. The phone market is unfortunately rife with this - the biggest players are all doing it, to their own benefit, and it's difficult enough to seriously enter the market that it's not very open to disruption.
I could agree with you if products that fail with the regulation have to put these shortcomings front and center on every place they are marketed on and not some fine print in some manual.
The idea of regulation is to allow consumers to just buy a thing and have certain expectations met.
If you buy a piece of lettuce you should be able to eat it without owning a fucking biology lab to check it first for example.
> As long as you know ahead of time what you are getting
Clearly people are looking for another option. One that isn't being offered. So the appropriate question is to ask why this market inefficiency exists. Is it because no competitor has entered the market and there's a golden opportunity? Is the barrier to entry very high? Does the average consumer even know they want <X> at the time of purchase? Or do they think really there only exists a basic option, Android or iPhone, and that the actual decision comes down to other things. (Listen to what most people actually talk about. Not HN people, the average consumer.)