“…prohibits repair stores from repairing components on the mainboard. Instead, the entire component must be replaced…”
A flagrant disregard for the costs of e-waste on the environment. What a surprise.
Not to mention data recovery
Even more dramatic is that if a repair service provider discovers a third-party spare part that was installed in a Galaxy device as part of a previous repair, they must immediately disassemble the smartphone, tablet or notebook into its individual parts and inform Samsung of the details of the respective incident.
Well this feels illegal (or certainly should be). Imagine taking your car in for a repair only to find out the shop functionally scrapped it and told on you to Ford, all because they noticed you had changed a tire.
“You used a non-Ford approved part. For your safety, we have disassembled your vehicle and reported you to the consumer protection police. You have lost your license and the full balance of your loan/lease is due in 24 hours.”
Ford: “Please only use certified Firestone Tires with your Explore. We’d hate for your SVU to unpredictably roll over. Better for it to predictably roll over.”
Ferrari be like “That’s not normal?”
Funny you mentioned that. I was out with my daughter a couple days ago and she got a flat that had to be replaced. She was legitimately worried that Toyota would void her warranty for not buying a tire from the dealership. Nevermind that we were out in rural nothingness with no Toyota dealership to be found.
Honestly, that’s pretty close to what could’ve been if the Right to Repair act for cars didn’t pass back when it did.
God bless iFixit, and God damn Samsung.
The use of aftermarket parts in repair is relatively common. This provision requires independent repair shops to destroy the devices of their own customers, and then to snitch on them to Samsung.
That’s just pure evil and bully. If you have aftermarket parts they will destroy the device and force you to pay for it. This is the reason we need right to repair. Every consumer should support it.
It’s honestly impressive to find out that someone is WORSE than Apple when it comes to repairing and customer rights.
Is this worse? It sounds pretty similar.
Apple will tie themselves in knots to make it impossible to repair your tech 3rd party, and maybe even refusing to fix it if it WAS repaired 3rd party before, but I’ve never heard of them also requiring that it be destroyed and your personal information given over.
They’ll brick your device if a part can’t be verified so that isn’t much different they destroying. Maybe they don’t require repair shops to hand over personal info, but they do require device identifiers so I wouldn’t be surprised if that is basically identical.
They don’t brick shit, don’t lie. It not booting until you swap the part back to a verified part isn’t even remotely close to a full bricking.
Consider this: A person has their iPhone battery replaced with a cheap Chinese 3rd party battery. A month later, the battery catches fire, injuring the person. Which headline do you honestly believe will run:
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Apple iPhone catches fire, injures owner.
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Unauthorized replacement iPhone battery catches fire, injures owner.
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I think the part that bothers me the most is that, the customer is likely completely oblivious to the fact that a repair person used a third party part in their device.
I don’t think most cellphone users are discerning enough to start checking if the repair place is actually licensed by Samsung to perform repairs or not. They just see the Samsung logo under the banner of “we fix these brands” and go in. As long as it’s fully working when they walk out, they couldn’t possibly give fewer shits whether genuine Samsung parts were used to fix the device.
This is essentially victim blaming. Anyone who can fix the phone themselves with non-Samsung parts is going to do it themselves and never get “caught” doing it. So instead of “catching” the “bad actors” putting non Samsung parts into phones, they’re putting that responsibility on customers? That’s a PR nightmare. What the fuck are they thinking?
