Dell replaces (or used to anyway) failed-upon-receipt 'new' machines with refurbs. You order a new laptop, it comes and doesn't turn on, you return it, ok so far. Then you get a refurb in the mail as a 'warranty replacement'. Paid for new, got used. How do they get away with it?

Because if they fixed the exact laptop you bought then it's basically a refurb at that point.

How about, they send you a fricking new laptop that works? Like you paid for. And refurb that dead-on-arrival thing to sell to somebody that wants a refurb.

Under UK law, you could demand a refund. You don't have to accept a repair or replacement for something that's DOA.

That's not what the OP was discussing. Does Dell replace a laptop if you drop it and crack its screen?

Huh? How is that a problem with the product? If you want protection against your own usage risks (accident, theft, etc) that's what insurance is for. But if the law required (this is completely as a quick example, there would need to be some real debate over exactly what lines up with reasonable expectations, and maybe it should be non-linear at the high end) 1 month per $35 with a minimum of 6 months and maximum of 5 years, and your $1600 Macbook had a display failure under normal usage 3 years and 2 months after buying it, then yes Apple would be required to deal with it for free.

And again "deal with it", it's up to them how. A replacement would obviously do it, but so would a repair, the whole point is each manufacturer could optimize for what they think is the best approach. Some will in fact go for easy repairability part swapping, so basically making each individual repair as cheap as possible. Others will work to increase their QA to reduce overall incident rate, so despite each individually costing more the overall rate would still be acceptable. There will be efforts to leverage the value offered by more compact systems into higher profit margins which then can help offset repair/replace costs too. Etc, everyone will do their own thing, and consumers will see in the sticker price all of that internalized for each company and know that no matter what they buy they can expect it to be taken care of for a reasonable period of time without any "extended warranty" shenanigans (extended warranties should only be necessary for professional/enterprise customers who really need a support cycle completely divorced from standard consumer usage and they can negotiate that and any SLAs themselves).

it is not a problem with the product, which is my point. The hardware provider is absolutely in their right to say "this isnt our fault, we're not fixing it", or to say "yeah that new screen will be $1000"

So no, we dont need "problems dealt with at zero monetary cost", we need hardware we can fix ourself. If you dont have a right to repair it yourself, you're at the mercy of the hardware provider, even if the screen only costs 1/10th of the quoted price, and you could do it yourself.

>So no, we dont need "problems dealt with at zero monetary cost", we need hardware we can fix ourself. If you dont have a right to repair it yourself, you're at the mercy of the hardware provider, even if the screen only costs 1/10th of the quoted price, and you could do it yourself.

I made an edit, I think I misunderstood you and I apologize. It may be for example that there should be provisions requiring that accidents are still covered within a time period "at cost" though not for free.

But if you want "hardware you can fix yourself" as a feature in and of itself, then I think you should just be asking that of the market and buying accordingly, I don't think it's a universal. And I want the option to sacrifice that for other values when I deem it appropriate. For example, I use my smartphone for significant amounts of financial transactions, administrative access, and it has an enormous amount of highly personal information as well. I value it being highly sealed off (and would like it to be even more so, I'd be happy with a phone that's not just IP68 but good to 10 or 20 ATM too). How do you propose to legislatively require a "right to repair" there while not having that break the hardware trust chain? How does it interact with value of sealing and form factor? It seems to me that everyone has different needs there, which in turn suggests to me that it's not something to legislatively require but rather leave it up to the market. On the other hand that someone should be able to buy something and have it last a reasonable time period and if broken it should be replaceable/repairable at cost seems like it should be part of the price. Am I totally off on that to you?

FWIW I don't think the same applies to software, in that case I think it should be required by law that owners may load their own private keys in addition to whatever the manufacturer offers. But right now I really think the option to buy into features like a hardware trust chain where I need never worry about anyone but the minimum of the original manufacturer (who is part of that by definition anyway) is desirable. I don't see how to avoid that meaning that 3rd party unauthorized repairs get closed off in turn. It's a tradeoff.

You should check out Linus Sebastian's experience with his broken iMac Pro screen.

He wanted to pay for the repairs, and Apple refused.

He then tried to buy the parts separately, and apparently if you got them from Apple, it would cost more than the computer was worth.

He eventually managed to source the parts through various people at a reasonable cost and repair his broken iMac with Louis Rossman.

Here are some of the videos (I'm sure I missed a couple, but it's a very interesting series of videos)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-NU7yOSElE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwEInwvFbwk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdwDvz47lNw

Apple could offer insurance, knowing full well how often accidents happen and how fragile mostly their phones are.

Insurance is for accidents; warranty is for their failures. And they have had a number of problems with pretty much every generation of product that would fall under warranty - delaminating screens (got it), broken speakers (got it), antennagate, etc.

They do offer insurance. It’s called AppleCare. It covers 2 accidental damages (read: cracked screens) and more.

And if the 2 years of warranty is over and my product breaks should I throw the device?

I had one of those early 2011 Macbook Pros that had the overheating GPU problem.

That overheating problem was well known, and it took a long time for Apple to recognize the problem and issue a repair order. It was long enough that the AppleCare expired for those who got the MBP right after release, like me.

Because the problem was really bad (logic board replacements had the same issue, and the problem would recur within a couple of months) that a lot of people who had bricked MBP's disposed of them, sometimes at a heavy loss.

I was lucky I didn't throw my bricked MBP in the bin, so when the repair order finally arrived months after my MBP bricked, I was able to get it fixed. I had switched to Windows in that time, and I ended up unloading it to a friend of mine (with full disclosures of its lineage).

I own a second hand Macbook, it has an issue with the screen and a slow harddrive, I am not fixing it because I do not use it anymore (I never liked laptops and this was the cheapest way I could test on a Mac at that time).

If Apple had it's way in future in a similar scenario, I could not fix it locally and cheap or the working parts could not be reused to fix other people devices.

I had a laptop that broke before(my fault), I went with it at shop and the motherboard needed to be replaced, I did not want to spend money on that but I could sell to them my remaining working components if I wanted too(screen and RAM) I did that and I still have somewhere the CPU,motherboard and the rest of the components.

It seeems like that’s an intellectually dishonest response. It’s clear that’s not what OP meant. That type of argument is lazy and doesn’t belong on HN. OP was pretty clearly talking about manufacturing defects and other issue, not damage caused by the consumer.