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Right To Repair

What peeves me a bit is electric rechargeable toothbrushes. After a few years, they fail to hold charge, so you have to buy a new one, with another charger you don't need.

Surely it is not beyond the wit of man to design one with a screw base to be able to replace batteries? Slight complication from the charging coil in the bottom, but some spring contacts and a single start thread should sort it? An O ring in the base to waterproof. Job done?

This is a prime example of obscene wastefulness, there should absolutely be a way to replace the battery's in most rechargeable devices.
 
Are there any UK forums for advice on repairing household electrical items (non hifi). E.g. my three year old £50 kettle won't switch off once boiling. I'm loath to replace it!
 
What peeves me a bit is electric rechargeable toothbrushes. After a few years, they fail to hold charge, so you have to buy a new one, with another charger you don't need.

Surely it is not beyond the wit of man to design one with a screw base to be able to replace batteries? Slight complication from the charging coil in the bottom, but some spring contacts and a single start thread should sort it? An O ring in the base to waterproof. Job done?

Don't get me started! I did google how to do it (seems it is possible ... with a soldering iron) but its a step too far for most people (me included). Why not have a screw base as you say.
 
Are there any UK forums for advice on repairing household electrical items (non hifi). E.g. my three year old £50 kettle won't switch off once boiling. I'm loath to replace it!
Is the little hole that leads to the thermostat blocked with limescale ?

https://checkappliance.co.uk/kettle...e water starts to,triggers the cut out switch.

When we lived in Banff/Rocky Mountains - very high up - the kettles never switched off due to the altitude - tried three different models.
 
It's a long story but basically if you buy everything from China, then they end up with all the money, which they then use to build weapons to threaten us. They also buy up vast amounts of Africa and Asia to do all the mining and eventually hold the rest of the planet to ransom. If you're happy with that then that's Ok. I'm not.
 
What’s the problem with them being made in China?

Aside from the oppressive dictatorship, dreadful labour and environmental conditions, disregard of intellectual property, poor quality of many components, the political game-playing etc etc?!

PS Sadly we are stuck with computer technology as it simply isn’t made anywhere else, but you can certainly find a kettle, hi-fi, guitars etc made in the UK, EU, USA etc by people paid a decent wage in decent conditions. FWIW my last cheap Asda Chinese kettle randomly failed ‘on’. I was sitting watching the TV, heard a ‘click’ from the kitchen followed by some boiling. On investigation the spring-loaded kettle switch had somehow failed closed and turned itself on. No idea how, but I suspect had I not been in it could have burned the house down. I’ve replaced it with a Dualit that claims to be made in the UK (I also have one of their toasters as it is bullet proof). I’m not on a budget with this stuff, I don’t care if a kettle costs £50 instead of a fiver if it will stay out of landfill and remain safe and functional. China is an amazing place, one I would love to visit one day, but the communist government is what it is and should be treated accordingly.
 
Aside from the oppressive dictatorship, dreadful labour and environmental conditions, disregard of intellectual property, poor quality of many components, the political game-playing etc etc?!

PS Sadly we are stuck with computer technology as it simply isn’t made anywhere else, but you can certainly find a kettle, hi-fi, guitars etc made in the UK, EU, USA etc by people paid a decent wage in decent conditions. FWIW my last cheap Asda Chinese kettle randomly failed ‘on’. I was sitting watching the TV, heard a ‘click’ from the kitchen followed by some boiling. On investigation the spring-loaded kettle switch had somehow failed closed and turned itself on. No idea how, but I suspect had I not been in it could have burned the house down. I’ve replaced it with a Dualit that claims to be made in the UK (I also have one of their toasters as it is bullet proof). I’m not on a budget with this stuff, I don’t care if a kettle costs £50 instead of a fiver if it will stay out of landfill and remain safe and functional. China is an amazing place, one I would love to visit one day, but the communist government is what it is and should be treated accordingly.

I think this is an important elaboration and final point.

too many posts / rants about China demonise the whole place / 'race' in a way which should be all too dismayingly familiar to any reasonable person. Two wrongs don't make a right, and all that. Obviously it's 'complicated', but short-hand wholesale condemnation is rarely justified or useful. And glib use of 'school-yard' terms like 'chi-fi' etc are part of that.
 
Good piece in the FT looking at why wireless earbuds are virtually impossible to repair or recycle. Horrible things.

By 2026, a decade after Apple released the first mainstream wireless earbuds, nearly all of these 750 million AirPods, Samsung Galaxy Buds and the rest will, given their lifespan of two to five years, probably be defunct. And the leftover mass of plastic, copper, circuit boards, magnets and batteries will join the planet’s trove of e-waste, which is expanding at a speed recycling can’t keep up with.
...
Right now, mass-market electronics don’t get much smaller than earbuds. Unlike plug-in earphones, an earbud’s dependence on a battery gives it a limited life span and requires a complex chemistry of critical raw materials such as lithium and cobalt. The magnets in the charging cases are likely to contain neodymium, another rare earth material. For Michael Rohwer from the US business sustainability network BSR, earbuds represent the most difficult part of the e-waste conundrum. “The number of headphones you’ve been through in your life is probably staggering. Earbuds take that problem to the next level.”


https://ig.ft.com/fixing-my-broken-wireless-earbuds/
 
Personally I would much rather put my gear in the hands of an experienced technician than try to fix something on my own, I understand it may save money but I am personally not prepared to risk losing so much when it comes to my gear.
 
Personally I would much rather put my gear in the hands of an experienced technician than try to fix something on my own, I understand it may save money but I am personally not prepared to risk losing so much when it comes to my gear.

That’s absolutely fine. Right To Repair only ensures a wider range of choices are available to consumers. There are no negatives here and nothing is stopping you choosing original manufacturer or approved third-party repair.

PS This video from iFixit went up a day or two ago and maybe shines a bit more light on what we are arguing for.

 
Personally I would much rather put my gear in the hands of an experienced technician than try to fix something on my own, I understand it may save money but I am personally not prepared to risk losing so much when it comes to my gear.

"Right to Repair" includes "Right to have [it] repaired". That is, you should have the right to repair it yourself if you can, or to take it to any competent technician that you choose. You should not be forced into having the device repaired (or worse, only replaced) at great expense by the manufacturer itself.
 
A "right to repair" victory for me today!

My kitchen TV - an 8 year old 20" LED Linsar - died suddenly on Friday. Given its age I was resigned to chucking it out and buying a new one, but couldn't see any I liked locally, or on the internet, so rang a local repair bloke. He diagnosed the problem over the phone - correctly as it turned out - as a dead power supply and said he'd pop round at 10:30 Sunday morning and fix it for £30, and he just did! Four replacement diodes and I have my telly back working :).

Anyone in the Hastings/East Sussex area need a TV repair man just google "1066 TV Solutions" and call Mike!

I guess the moral of this story is that there are still people out there who can fix stuff, and without it costing an arm and a leg.
 
This is a prime example of obscene wastefulness, there should absolutely be a way to replace the battery's in most rechargeable devices.

I feel the same way about wireless headphones - every 3 years, the batteries die and you are forced to replace them, creating a mountain of toxic waste. Meanwhile I've had quality wired headphones going strong for 15+ years. I don't inherently have a problem with wireless headphones (or wireless toothbrushes for that matter), but the government should enforce the right to repair these and other products. Perhaps it will help reorient us away from this wasteful throw-away consumer culture.
 
Repairing you owned goods wherever you want to have them repaired should be a human right.

If big tech have an issue with this then they need to define if it's hardware repairs or software repairs that are the issue.

It seems to me that big tech think that allowing independent repair could possibly allow data theft etc. If that's the case then either they should make plan to prevent data loss/theft
on a programming level. After all they're the ones who control your devices.

I don't need to hook up a laptop to you Eyephone to change a flipping battery.

Slap my forehead.


I will happily take anything apart and on most occasions put them back together in a roughly similar shape that they arrived on my kitchen table providing I have all the data from the manufacturer. Failing that, I would just fix it.

Let's go Rossman.
 
Everyone has a right to contact their MP and meet with them. Well worth talking to them and let them know how you are feeling.
 


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