The McFlurry Machine Company Just Got Hit with a McRestraining Order

https://gizmodo.com/the-mcflurry-machine-company-just-got-hit-with-a-mcrest-1847449236

by ourmandave • 5 years ago

5 3 5 years ago

That company, Taylor, is a particularly egregious purveyor that serves as a perfect example of the exact business model right-to-repair advocates are trying to abolish: sell businesses a persnickety machine that’s likely to break down, prevent them from understanding exactly where the malfunction is occurring, and then help yourself to a healthy cut of the distributors’ profit from the resultant repairs.

What is stopping people from manufacturing a better ice cream machine? Absolutely nothing. I don't understand this ""right""-to-repair movement.

MikeUt• 5 years ago

What is stopping people from manufacturing a better ice cream machine? Absolutely nothing. I don't understand this ""right""-to-repair movement.

Do you think that's a viable solution? When the market fails to deliver what consumers and voters want, to ignore what caused or allowed that failure, because "nothing's stopping you"*? And when the new competitor abandons their idealism (or gets bought out) and decides they too will increase profit by sabotaging their machines?

*Except network effects, lock-in, sunk-cost, the significant technological and financial edge of existing companies, startup costs,..

weare138• 5 years ago

This situation is unique. McDonald's forces it's restaurants and even it's franchisees to use one of 2 ice cream vending machine manufacturers they have contracts with, Taylor and Carpigiani, an overseas company based in Italy. Taylor purposely designs these machines to prevent restaurants from being able to service them by having an undocumented menu in the software that shows the actual error codes forcing the restaurants to pay a Taylor authorized technician to 'fix' the machine. Most of the time it's an issue the restaurant could have handled if they could access this hidden service menu on the machine even though the restaurants own these machines. McDonald's ice cream products are some of their best selling products so franchisees have no choice but to pay these exorbitant service fess or lose more revenue to lost sales. Taylor reports 25% of it's revenue comes from maintenance and repair. Essentially McDonald's and Taylor are holding restaurants hostage and trapping them in this cycle of constant service calls knowing franchisees have no choice but to pay the service fees. Check out Wired's original article for the backstory behind Kytch and Taylor:

https://www.wired.com/story/they-hacked-mcdonalds-ice-cream-...

The McFlurry Machine Company Just Got Hit with a McRestraining Order

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