Why Doesn't US Make 2 Year Warranty on Products Mandatory Like EU?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15725753

by csurya • 9 years ago

14 23 9 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

ng-user• 9 years ago

Vastly different set of principles clearly.

martin_bech• 9 years ago

The products and prices are basically the same, so why you guys dont insist on a 2 year warranty, is puzzling to me.

foobarbazetc• 9 years ago

People care more about how much money companies make than their own well being as customers.

It’s weird.

brianwawok• 9 years ago

Why doesn't the EU pay developers 6 figures?

lewisj489• 9 years ago

Why doesn't the EU pay developers 6 figures?

.. They do?

nicolasd• 9 years ago

Maybe in Switzerland - but not in Germany / Austria. If there are so many companies that do this, please tell me :)

basedfahayek2• 9 years ago

Freedom in principle is important in the US. Why can’t I sell a shoddy product? Why can’t I buy a shoddy product?

csurya3• 9 years ago

looks like there is a dark side to the word freedom.

basedfahayek2• 9 years ago

How do you mean?

unholiness• 9 years ago

Markets with imperfect information are less efficient. If everyone knew which products were shit, then yeah, warrantees do take away freedom. But by providing a floor on product quality, consumers are freed from needing to do a large amount of research to determine which products will last (research, which, might I add, is still imperfect. Even the best products have defects protected by warrantees).

Also, warrantees force companies to bear the full cost of their negative externalities. In lots of markets, companies will come out ahead by not fixing or replacing your product (brand damage < actual damage), so those businesses are motivated directly into misleading consumers into buying worse products. Sounds obvious, but clearly that's not good for a society in the long run.

mathewsanders• 9 years ago

New Zealand has the consumer guarantees act that requires companies to provide repairs or replacements for goods for a reasonable duration.

https://www.govt.nz/browse/consumer-rights-and-complaints/co...

I used this with my first MacBook when the trackpad stopped working outside the default period.

Rather than being based on a fixed period of time it’s based on the expected quality of the product- because Apple computers are a lot more expensive than competitors it’s assumed that Apple are selling a higher quality/more durable product that should last for a reasonable period of time.

Unfortunately Apple doesn’t have any NZ offices so I had to deal with Australian office that took several letters to convince them they needed to make the repair under New Zealand law.

In the end we negotiated and I got free replacement parts and service under a $100 service fee.

jklein11• 9 years ago

Do you know the name of the EU provision that makes 2 year warranties on products mandatory?

tho99• 9 years ago

It's name is Directive 99/44/EG. Here is the link to the english HTML version http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:319...

Unfortunately it is not that simple with with the two years. The directive states that a good needs to confirm with the contract at the time of sale. So the seller is only liable for a lack of conformity with the contract which was present at the time the goods were delivered. And that's the point were one needs to pay attention.

For the first six month any fault of the product - if it is required by the contract explicitly or implicitly - the seller needs to prove that the fault didn't exist at the time of delivery. After the six month period the consumer needs to prove this fact. So there are 2 years theoretically but in practice it is not that easy.

M2Ys4U• 9 years ago

That should be Directive 99/44/EC, with a C on the end, also known as the "Consumer Rights Directive"

SamReidHughes3• 9 years ago

U.S. citizen here. The products I buy are working great, and I get cheap stuff. No need for mandatory warranties.

tinus_hn2• 9 years ago

If the products are so great it wouldn’t cost anything to offer 2 years of warranty since they’d never break anyway. But they do.

SamReidHughes3• 9 years ago

Yes it would cost a bunch, because many users suck at taking care of their cheap stuff, they don't have any sense of stress their mishandling puts on things, or because they're plain scammers. It's a risk companies and sellers don't need, especially small ones, and the benefit is that they can make stuff cheaper, sell stuff cheaper, and people can buy stuff cheaper. One of the many reasons median Americans enjoy a higher material standard of living than people in Europe.

futhey• 9 years ago

Consumer protection and regulation have declined in popularity in the US.

Why Doesn't US Make 2 Year Warranty on Products Mandatory Like EU?

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