This past week the FTC has started putting manufacturers on notice that they must honor their warranties and stop interfering with their customers right to repair equipment themself or have an outside company perform repairs for them. Therefore enforcing the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975.
What this means to regular consumers is that they no longer void their warranty when they decide to try and repair an item such as a computer or they hire a outside company such as RenoGeek to do computer repairs for them.
They even took note of the Warranty Void stickers we see on most electronic devices, stating that such stickers are both misleading and illegal.
What this means for the average computer user is that they no longer need fear losing their warranty if they repair their equipment or hire somebody to do it for them.
It’s also evidence that the government will take action against the growing trend by some companies like Apple, who try and make their computers almost “repair proof”. In other words, they try and design a product that is very hard to almost impossible to repair to insure customers buy new equipment or send their equipment back to the manufacturers for repairs that in general are much more expensive than the going rates at most repair shops.
So score one for consumers this week. 🙂