Photo: Leonid Yastremskiy / 123rf
Kiwis are one step closer to the guaranteed right to repair the products they own with the Consumer Guarantees (Right to Repair) Amendment Bill set for its first reading in Parliament on Wednesday.
If successful, the legislation would compel manufacturers to ensure repair facilities and spare parts for their products are made available in New Zealand.
Paul Smith was previously the head of T testing at Consumer NZ and now runs his own consultancy business, FixedFirstNZ.
While it is not law yet, he said the reading was still a big win for campaigners who had fought for years for better consumer protections, akin to those in countries like Australia and the UK.
"There's been a group of us around called the Right to Repair Aotearoa Coalition, and it's been about four or five years that we've been pushing for some legislation."
Paul Smith. Photo: Chris Coad
"The right to repair in general... is the idea that we own all of our products, and we're being prevented by the manufacturers from fixing them.
"Simple things like, if you need a small part to fix something that's broken, you can get that small part, - and at the moment you can't."
Under the current New Zealand Consumer Guarantees Act, manufacturers must refund or replace a faulty product. But they're under no obligation to repair.
"In fact, there's a crazy loophole that says you have to, as a manufacturer, you have to provide repair assistance, unless you don't provide repair assistance and you just tell people that upfront.
"So in practice, nobody does."
"What this bill does is it says, as a consumer you can request a repair, and the manufacturer has to comply, rather than fob you off with a replacement or a refund.
He said similar 2021 laws passed in the UK targeting large appliances and whiteware have been a huge success for consumers.
"[Here] if you want to go down that line of 'I need to fix my dryer, I'll go to the website', they point you to the product manual and a customer helpline.
"If you do that in the UK, it's a step-by-step guide if you want to repair it: 'Do you want to repair it yourself? Or do you want us to help you find somebody to repair it for you?'
"If you want to repair it yourself, it steps you through diagnostic troubleshooting... then you can buy those parts online, through their store, and the entire process is supported. That is a direct result of the right-to-repair legislation that they passed.
"These are the same manufacturers that we have here, people like Electrolux."
Although opponents argue these laws pushed up costs, Smith said the evidence overseas simply did not back that up.
"We did some research overseas, because they've had right-to-repair laws for for a number of years in quite a few places now, and there's no evidence whatsoever that the costs go up."
"When you think about it, this isn't adding a cost to a business. This is the business already has to deal with all these products that are returned. At the moment, what they're doing is replacing a full product with another full product.
"What we're doing here is saying... there's another option. If you provide the parts, you don't have to provide the entire product.
"So the cost's already in the business, it's just diverting it into something that we think is a lot more useful."
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