So the UK's new "right to repair" laws have come into force. On the face of it this is a good thing but there is some way to go, yet, to have a fully satisfactory scheme. In particular what seems to be missing is anything pushing for "design to repair". I have encountered two woeful examples in my own home recently.
Firstly a selector switch in my fridge-freezer failed. It was a stupid piece of design relying on a thin piece of plastic flexing to make or break a connection - one might think designed to fail by fatigue (and it did!). Was a replacement available? Was it hell. And I bet it would have been a whole new switch bank had the manufacturer bothered to have anything ready. As it was Bodge It and Fudge It Inc. (i.e. me) managed to effect a rather messy repair that may last a while.
Then another silly plastic item failed on our bread maker. This little widget certainly wasn't repairable but rather than enabling its replacement the manufacturer would only supply the whole component of which it was a part. As a consequence I had to part with over £40 because of the failure of an item that probably cost less than 1p to manufacture. Affordability is another area where the legislation looks rather weak.
We live in hope!
