Re:EU brings in 'right to repair' rules for appliances
by chopin on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @06:34AM
(#21123880)
As I said: I don't want to be at their mercy even if they handled my case well. What especially bothered me is the fact that among the parts changed was an item (the controller) which had 250€ on the price list. It apparently had not been sealed water tight although construction wise it could be exposed to hot vapour. For that price point I expect everything being IP67, parts and connectors. It's not exactly hard, I've done this myself. The parts are only protected by a cooling fan designed to keep also the moisture away. For some reason, the fan did not work at one cycle. There is no detection in place to detect this, leading to a bricked oven. In my book this is engineering fail on many levels.
Edited to add: Miele offers a 10 year warranty extension, at roughly 20% of the original price. It is left as an exercise for the reader what such a premium means for the expected failure rate...
That's good? As far as it goes, it's a good smell at least.
I'm not of a view that a warranty guarantees no faults. To my mind it is the manufacturer saying they will stand by their product for the warranty period, that they expect no faults, and putting their money on the line to prove it. So I'm not particularly in favour of castigating companies for any unreliability, if they handle it correctly.
Having said all this, I did just check what Miele's warranty is, I was expecting 5+ years, but it's only 2 years, so your point about competitors is a good one.
I suppose it highlights a good point about what we as consumers should do. Should we go with Miele that everyone knows is good quality, but only offers a 2 year warranty. Or should we go with the competitor with the 5 year warranty? I suspect most of us would take the first option, when we should really be taking the 2nd.