Experts call New York’s Right to Repair bill “functionally useless”

What should have been a pivotal moment for Right to Repair movements, has been met with backlash after it was found key changes have neutered the bill.

The Right to Repair is an ongoing issue amongst the consumer, companies, and governments. In the EU and UK, there’s a grace period where the manufacturer has to repair the device.

However, in America, it is down to the individual states to negotiate with those involved in the process. The bill was altered by Governor Kathleen Hochul to not include home appliances, among other things.

New York’s Right to Repair bill is “functionally useless” according to YouTuber and owner of Rossman Repair Group, Louis Rossmann.

For the past six years, Rossmann has been working with legislators in New York to ensure that the Right to Repair bill is helpful to the consumer.

The bill included safeguards to ensure that particular parts will be made available. This would have assisted with a large portion of repairs, as companies like Apple have found ways around it.

In his video, Rossmann shows that the repair costs of Apple laptops could be $28 but currently cost $750. This is due to companies lobbying with manufacturers to ensure that these parts don’t go on general sale. With Apple, they force the consumer to replace the full innards, rather than the problem.

“Why do people come to us? Why do people come to this store, rather than the manufacturer?

“The manufacturer will tell you when you have a bad $28 chip on your motherboard, you need to replace the $745 motherboard.”

Right to Repair is “functionally useless” in New York

Part of the change is under the guise of safety. The FTC provided a 56-page document covering the potential safety concerns of the consumer for repairing their own products.

Rossmann points out, that the document never draws the conclusion that there’s any risk to the consumer.

A portion of the letter from the governor includes an uncited section about how there are concerns for the safety of those repairing. Thus the governor and lobbyists have nixed it from the bill.

“The legislation as drafted included technical issues that could put safety and security at risk, as well as heighten the risk of injury from physical repair projects, and I am pleased to have reached an agreement with the legislature to address these issues.”

Further on, the governor states that:

“This agreement eliminates the bill’s original requirement calling for original equipment manufacturers to provide to the public any passwords, security codes, or materials to override security features…”

In altering the bill to include this, it means devices that require a specific state to be in to be prepped to be repaired will still need the manufacturer to be involved with the process of repair.

The bill now also “allows for original equipment manufacturers” to “provide assemblies of parts rather than individual components when the risk of improper installation heightens the risk of injury.”

As Rossmann points out in his video, this is similar to how Samsung provides spare batteries to the consumer right now. Instead of just the battery, you are often forced to also buy the screen too, as it is physically glued together in the factory.

The risk now is that the consumer could potentially buy a faulty battery from an unauthorized shop.

Who is responsible?

Outside of the governor and the lobbyists, laptop manufacturer Framework has pointed to the TechNet group as one of the main reasons.

Framework is a company that advocates for the right to repair and has developed the Framework laptop to be focused on that aspect. It comes with full manuals online, diagrams, and even a screwdriver in the box.

TechNet is a group that is made up of mostly large tech companies, like Apple, who have a vested interest in not providing these parts.

While Apple and others, like Samsung, do currently have repair programs, the parts are priced astronomically high, in a bid to keep their current status quo.

“We’re literally right back where we started,” said Rossmann in his video on the topic.

“What they did was pass a bill, that to the public looks like they solve our problem, with one line in there to give the manufacturer a complete out to not solve any of our problems.”