FTC Says 'Warranty Void If Removed' Stickers Are Bullshit

Marvellous for you guys.
It actually seems a bit harsh in some respects now lol. (in regard to potentially unqualified people causing further harm when trying to effect a repair, someone getting curious and causing unseen damage while having a look inside, or using a 3rd party faulty power adapter on a high end product ...)
I wonder how this translates over the pond.
 
Glad to hear - cause I just removed a warranty sticker myself to reapply thermal paste. Btw, their paste was EVERYWHERE.. Just gooped on.
 
Those stickers are largely the reason I say that warranties are made to be voided!

I actually had to remove some foil warranty stickers from an Amiga 500 I imported a while back, just to see what was inside. Remarkably, nobody else has been inside this thing past the trapdoor slot on the bottom for the usual 512k RAM/RTC expansion, and a lot of computer shops generally had to open them up and add their own warranty stickers for things like swapping the Kickstart ROM, adding accelerators and other stuff like that where you need to get right to the motherboard.

Besides, it's not like a warranty on that thing would be any good; Commodore's been dead since 1994! That's really why people need to be able to service these things on their own; there's a very real chance the manufacturers themselves will just go out of business, or generally stop caring about your hardware and urge you to buy something new.

The latter case would be, say, having the original CECHA revision of the PS3 that still has the PS2 hardware on the motherboard, and those tend to be at risk of YLoD (if they haven't died already) due to that infamous RoHS-imposed migration to lead-free solder for the BGA connections on the GPU and CPU. If you send it in to Sony for a "repair", you get a newer revision back that lacks the PS2 components, so you're hosed if you want to play disc games that aren't offered as downloadable PS2 Classics. You have to go to third-party specialists to get the GPU (and possibly CPU) reballed, not only keeping that particular revision of the system, but ensuring you'll be able to retain your old saves on your existing HDD due to the per-console encryption used on the internal HDD. (If you didn't make a backup to an external USB drive or already migrate it all over to another system, you'd be hosed!)
 
Ive gone through dozens of stickers just by normal wear and tear. Never actually opened up any of the devices.
 
Some companies have been good about this for awhile (at least here in the states.) I had an XFX R9 280x where both fans failed and they shipped me out a whole cooler assembly. When I asked about the "warranty void" sticker, they said it doesn't apply to US customers and my lifetime warranty would not be affected. I had some other companies in the past say the same thing, but there are still several that will give you hell (*COUGH* APPLE *COUGH*) about it.

Louis Rossmann quoted them at one of their lobbying shindigs that "adding a jumper wire to repair a broken trace turns an apple computer into a PC." I couldn't come up with the words on how stupid that was.

I can see from a manufacturers perspective why they'd want them, to prevent idiot customers from defrauding them (which is a real problem), but scumbags like Apple and others have ruined it for the whole industry.
 
I really love that this has been published and people won't be afraid to do things.
 
Back in 2002 when I ran a business building custom PCs I actually started using these stickers. Why? Because we could not afford to keep fixing computers that idiots would break or change hardware. Example one, someone tries to add more RAM. They actually broke the RAM slot! It was already in the warranty that even if they did not buy the hardware from us we would install it free of charge. Example two, the swapped out hard drive. Customer brought in his system with a crashed hard drive. Tested it and it was dead. Only problem was that it was a Western Digital drive. We never installed that brand as back then we found them to be too unreliable. Example three through I lost count, bent pins from people messing with the CPU.

I always went case by case whenever a system had a broken seal. Most of the time we honored the warranty.

So you see these seals do have a place and use.
 
I don't understand the objection. If you want the warranty, just honor the terms. Simple.

If you are unable to resist removing stickers then you suffer the loss of warranty. Simple.

Wanna keep the warranty? Leave the stickers alone. Is that so difficult?
 
margrave said:
I don't understand the objection. If you want the warranty, just honor the terms. Simple.

If you are unable to resist removing stickers then you suffer the loss of warranty. Simple.

Wanna keep the warranty? Leave the stickers alone. Is that so difficult?
Click to expand...

Its not that simple.
If you have an upgrade performed its reasonable to make sure it has been done and to the standard requested.
If something needs repair through say wear and tear and the mfr is quoting silly money or you have a preferred repair shop, you should be allowed to have it repaired elsewhere without losing warranty.
This should make mfrs adjust repair costs to reasonable levels otherwise they lose business.
You should be able to upgrade devices yourself with basic plug in parts, even when a screwdriver is needed to get access.
etc.
Reading the article will help you.
 
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Hofy said:
Back in 2002 when I ran a business building custom PCs I actually started using these stickers. Why? Because we could not afford to keep fixing computers that idiots would break or change hardware. Example one, someone tries to add more RAM. They actually broke the RAM slot! It was already in the warranty that even if they did not buy the hardware from us we would install it free of charge. Example two, the swapped out hard drive. Customer brought in his system with a crashed hard drive. Tested it and it was dead. Only problem was that it was a Western Digital drive. We never installed that brand as back then we found them to be too unreliable. Example three through I lost count, bent pins from people messing with the CPU.

I always went case by case whenever a system had a broken seal. Most of the time we honored the warranty.

So you see these seals do have a place and use.
Click to expand...

Sticker or no sticker, it is and was perfectly legit for warranties to be voided if the owner broke their device so is your point that you couldn't say no?

margrave said:
I don't understand the objection. If you want the warranty, just honor the terms. Simple.

If you are unable to resist removing stickers then you suffer the loss of warranty. Simple.

Wanna keep the warranty? Leave the stickers alone. Is that so difficult?
Click to expand...

Guaranteed when some company does something illegal and anti-consumer there's never a shortage of fools to chime in and say SO WHAT?
 
It was never illegal before. And (from the above discussion) seems to only be illegal now ... IF the court opinion holds up.

And how is it "anti-consumer"? It's not. I just means "don't try to repair this because you don't know how".

If, indeed, you DO know how, then fine. Have at it. But if you break it while attempting repairs, why would you expect the manufacturer to assume responsibility for that?
 
margrave said:
It was never illegal before. And (from the above discussion) seems to only be illegal now ... IF the court opinion holds up.

And how is it "anti-consumer"? It's not. I just means "don't try to repair this because you don't know how".

If, indeed, you DO know how, then fine. Have at it. But if you break it while attempting repairs, why would you expect the manufacturer to assume responsibility for that?
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Say what now? The Magnus-Moss Warranty Act has been the law of the land since 1975.
 
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Who care and hat the ftc says. You still going to have to go through the Hassel of taking them to court. Sure it proabably open shut case or they manufacturer won't even send a lawyer. People are lazy and do t want/can't take off work for a few hundred dollars. It is why speed/red camera tickets are typically cheap and no points. Peoe will just pay it and move on.
 
vegeta535 said:
Who care and hat the ftc says. You still going to have to go through the Hassel of taking them to court. Sure it proabably open shut case or they manufacturer won't even send a lawyer. People are lazy and do t want/can't take off work for a few hundred dollars. It is why speed/red camera tickets are typically cheap and no points. Peoe will just pay it and move on.
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That's pretty pessimistic of ya- hopefully this statement from the FTC means the manufacturers won't try to turn down warranty work just because the stickers are removed.
 
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