I've always been a guy who fixes most of my own stuff and I never thought much about it. But with the vastly increased technological components of many products, it has become more difficult even if I can do my own work.
Take the IPhone. You buy it and own it, but if you try to change a component within the product, such as the battery, Apple will invalidate their responsibility for the product. Why? Apple loves the rich profitability that sole ownership of the IPhone repair market provides.
In the attached article, farmers have the same issue, but on a vastly larger scale. A farmer pays more than 1/2 million for equipment and when it stops working, they aren't permitted to fix it themselves regardless if they own the equipment and could fix it. The attached article provides an eye opening about the "right to repair" issue being discussed more frequently these days.
Car manufactures were required to add a diagnosis plug underneath their dash back in the 1990's. Because cars were migrating to being more electronically based, regulation required that manufacturers provide the plug as a way for a wide array of repair people to access information on electronic issues. With this invention, the owner could easily find out the source of most electronic issues with their car. It only required a 100 dollar device that would work on any vehicle.
Since the original regulation to install the diagnosis port in all cars, manufacturers have added vastly more sophisticated diagnosis information into their vehicles. Unfortunately, the equipment and software to get this more detailed diagnosis information can no longer be obtained through a simple $100 universal device.
The device to plug into the car’s diagnosis port to get the more granular information on electronic issues costs thousands of dollars. Furthermore, each make of car requires its own device and the software in the device has to be upgraded each year!
The bottom line is the cost of diagnosis equipment makes it uneconomical for most owners to purchase it. The result is the dealers have a monopoly on servicing many aspects of modern cars.
While I agree that the latest features of new cars are really enticing, I can imagine that the average cost of a single dealer visit will climb quickly into the multiple thousands range. And dealers want me to buy a car that is almost entirely electronic? Oh hell no!
Even if you don't fix your own stuff, the right to repair is a big issue. Why? We'll all pay higher rates for monopolistic repair services. Technology has steadily provided more and more highly sophisticated functionality at lower and lower prices. An example is laptops over the last 10 to 20 years. This trend should be applicable to car’s diagnosis ports as well, but with the artificial barriers created by the dealerships to monopolize repair services, costs are rising!
Be smart, be well-read, be aware and be successful.
