iLiad Units that download the developer package lose warranty and free of charge support !?

[Ovydake]

I found this on the iRex site:

Note:
- Units that download the developer package lose warranty and free of charge support.

http://support.irexnet.com/index.php...id=31&nav=0,12

I know that if I break iLiad's Linux I will have to pay the reflash, but will I also lose the warranty to my hardware?

[haridasi]

It's amazing that they take away warranty when downloading something they provide.

Actually, I'm not so sure that's even legal by law. Not here in norway anyway.

[RickyMaveety]

Originally Posted by Ovydake

I found this on the iRex site:

Note:
- Units that download the developer package lose warranty and free of charge support.

http://support.irexnet.com/index.php...id=31&nav=0,12

I know that if I break iLiad's Linux I will have to pay the reflash, but will I also lose the warranty to my hardware?

Originally Posted by haridasi

It's amazing that they take away warranty when downloading something they provide.

Actually, I'm not so sure that's even legal by law. Not here in norway anyway.

It probably is legal. That's because the warranty probably states that if you muck about with the innards, hardware or software, you void the warranty.

Now, they are supplying you with the means to muck about with the software, but that doesn't mean that you won't do a lot of damage to your unit by doing so.

So, it's not so much that you are voiding the warranty because you downloaded the SDK ... it's just that, once you actually do anything with it ... anything at all ... you will have voided your warranty.

Sort of like having a locked door that has a big sign that says "open this door and you are really screwed" ... and then giving you the key, but telling you that if you use the key and open the door ... you are really screwed.

And ... they are not even going to take into account that you never really did anything awful to the software. They are telling you, consumer, that they are within their rights to assume that if you downloaded the SDK, you were the one that screwed up your unit. So, don't come crying to them.

You would have to read your original warrany information. But, my educated guess is that this warning is nothing more than a restatement of something else that is already in the warranty.

[tribble]

Well, if you have a controler defect or something else that is hardware related, so far i have not heard that iRex would not fix those devices even if they had the developer package installed. This is probably to ensure, that you could do stuff that breaks the machine, which then will not be covered by warranty.

[Adam B.]

+1

I've never heard of them denying warranty on hardware related problems because shell access has been installed. They've covered my hardware issues under warranty, even though I've been hacking on the iLiad since it's been possible.

[haridasi]

In norway the consumer warranty is 3 - 5 years, and it's part of our constitution. Recently there was a verdict stating that mobile phones have 5 years warranty no matter what the company itself said. It depends on the laws in the country.

[Shaggy]

No, you don't lose your warranty (this is a common question on the iRex forum). I think the sentence in the link was just written poorly.

Everything I've ever seen/heard from iRex in the past has always said that if you download the developers package and something in a 3rd party application messes up your iLiad, then that is not covered under warranty. Any problems with iRex hardware or iRex software are still covered.

Basically, they will not offer warranty repair for problems that somebody else's software caused. But they will still fix their own problems.

The actual statement when you download the developer package says:

By clicking the button below, I agree that the use of this package and the installation of my own applications are at my own risk and I accept that iRex Technologies can not take any responsibility for any damage caused to my device, software or data arising through the use of this package.

[RickyMaveety]

Originally Posted by haridasi

In norway the consumer warranty is 3 - 5 years, and it's part of our constitution. Recently there was a verdict stating that mobile phones have 5 years warranty no matter what the company itself said. It depends on the laws in the country.

Possibly, but then Norway is one country that apparently voids all contacts between a buyer and a seller. Which means, if I were a manufacturer of a product ... even if it was a great product .... I don't know that I would want to sell it in Norway, knowing that I would have to take all the contract terms as set by the Norwegian government.

And .... maybe you've hit on the reason that Amazon is not selling the Kindle outside of the United States. I mean .... who would want to take on that kind of nightmare??

[haridasi]

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

Possibly, but then Norway is one country that apparently voids all contacts between a buyer and a seller. Which means, if I were a manufacturer of a product ... even if it was a great product .... I don't know that I would want to sell it in Norway, knowing that I would have to take all the contract terms as set by the Norwegian government.

And .... maybe you've hit on the reason that Amazon is not selling the Kindle outside of the United States. I mean .... who would want to take on that kind of nightmare??

Actually, having strong (take the word strong with some salt) consumer rights means increased contact between buyer and seller. If something isn't working - don't you want the seller to improve his products and support? That's exactly what happens when consumer rights are strong, and it's working.

The Norwegian Consumer Council recently went against ITunes and won because of it's illegal use of DRM . Effect: ITunes have started providing DRM free music and can't make it so that only ipods can play the music purchased. Do you consider that to be a bad thing? Or that it alienates buyer and seller?

You can read about it here:
The Norwegian Consumer Council

If a company considers consumer rights as a bad thing well, then that is what I would consider to be a insincere company that I wouldn't like to purchase goods from anyway.

[RickyMaveety]

Originally Posted by haridasi

Actually, having strong (take the word strong with some salt) consumer rights means increased contact between buyer and seller. If something isn't working - don't you want the seller to improve his products and support? That's exactly what happens when consumer rights are strong, and it's working.

The Norwegian Consumer Council recently went against ITunes and won because of it's illegal use of DRM . Effect: ITunes have started providing DRM free music and can't make it so that only ipods can play the music purchased. Do you consider that to be a bad thing? Or that it alienates buyer and seller?

You can read about it here:
The Norwegian Consumer Council

If a company considers consumer rights as a bad thing well, then that is what I would consider to be a insincere company that I wouldn't like to purchase goods from anyway.

No ... but, I started another thread about this topic, because I am really curious about how it is enforced. Now, iPods have never been (in this country anyway) such that they would only play music that was purchased. Every iPod I have owned will play any mp3 that I care to stick on it. Period. So, I don't see that any suit by Norway has impacted on my ability to use my iPod as I wish ... I've always been able to do that.

But, I would be curious as to how you would deal with a Norwegian consumer who purchases a product while on vacation ... say in France. And, that product is manufactured in Mexico. Now ... the manufacturer's warranty according to the packaging is one year. OK?? Now .... the Norwegian consumer has problems with his product in year three. So, even though the product was not sold in Norway, and not manufactured in Norway ... you are telling me that the Country of Norway will sue the Mexican manufacturer to enforce a five year warranty??

Well, that's one hell of a country you've got there if that's the case, but your government must spend an awful lot of time in litigation with foreign manufacturers over warranty and other contractual issues.

[haridasi]

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

No ... but, I started another thread about this topic, because I am really curious about how it is enforced. Now, iPods have never been (in this country anyway) such that they would only play music that was purchased. Every iPod I have owned will play any mp3 that I care to stick on it. Period. So, I don't see that any suit by Norway has impacted on my ability to use my iPod as I wish ... I've always been able to do that.

But, I would be curious as to how you would deal with a Norwegian consumer who purchases a product while on vacation ... say in France. And, that product is manufactured in Mexico. Now ... the manufacturer's warranty according to the packaging is one year. OK?? Now .... the Norwegian consumer has problems with his product in year three. So, even though the product was not sold in Norway, and not manufactured in Norway ... you are telling me that the Country of Norway will sue the Mexican manufacturer to enforce a five year warranty??

Well, that's one hell of a country you've got there if that's the case, but your government must spend an awful lot of time in litigation with foreign manufacturers over warranty and other contractual issues.

Ipods will play any mp3 you stick on it. BUT - previously, if you bought a song on ITunes it would only play on an ipod. If you tried to play it on a cd, mobile phones, anything else than your ipod, it wouldn't work.

I probably wouldn't get anywhere if I bought a device in France and took it with me home, unless they sold the device in Norway as well.

And it's not like the council takes on every case (but my experience with them have indeed been excellent and they have taken it seriously).

[axel77]

Originally Posted by haridasi

Actually, having strong (take the word strong with some salt) consumer rights means increased contact between buyer and seller. If something isn't working - don't you want the seller to improve his products and support? That's exactly what happens when consumer rights are strong, and it's working.

If something isn't working depends on if you actually broke it, or if it was their fault. If you install the dev package, and then send it in with "all my device data including operating system magically vanished" they can fairly assume you (or another 3rd party device) will have called "rm -rf /" in the shell and charge you for the replacement flash.

If you did not install the shell package, iRex will have to be responsible for all software faults. But when you open your device up, you cannot blame them for the software to fail.

[haridasi]

If I broke it, then I will happily pay for the costs to fix it.

It's not like the consumer laws in norway makes the seller have to fix something if the user chose to stand in front of them and start hitting the product so it broke....

Common sense do come into the equation here.

[MarkRPenn]

It's similar, though not as strong, here in the UK. Basically warranties have to carry a statement that "your statutory rights are not affected", which means that if there's a conflict between what the manufacturer says he'll give you in his terms, and what the law says he should give you, the law wins, even if you apparently accepted his terms by buying the product.

That seems to me to be entirely sensible. Too many times in the past manufacturers tried to avoid responsibility by putting onerous terms into contracts they knew no normal consumer would ever read.

If a manufacturer sells something that any reasonable person would expect to last 5 years (an iLiad for example), how is it unfair to the manufacturer for me to insist that it actually does if used properly?

As in Norway, common sense prevails. Here you have a right to make a claim through the courts within 7 years, even if the warranty is only 1 year, BUT you have to show the court that the failure was outside what you'd reasonably expect for the product in question. So a claim for a paper plate that only lasted one meal would fail, while one for a washing machine that failed after 15 months would probably succeed. It's all about being "fit for purpose".

As is true across the world I believe, the laws that apply are those of the country in which the product was sold, not those of the country in which it's used (reasonable, as the manufacturer has control of the first but not the second), so the point about buying in France and taking it back to Norway is mute. If you wanted to make a legal claim, you'd have to do it in France.

On the other hand, in the UK, it's the retailer that's responsible for meeting my rights, not the manufacturer. Again, fair enough as the retailer operates in my country, while the manufacturer may not. So if my iLiad fails and Irex won't fix it, I can claim on Libresco. This is a point many consumers fail to understand and which therefore allows the retailers to get away with murder. Many big stores will try to fob you off with "contact the manufacturer for support after 28 days", which is illegal. PC World tried that with me with a TomTom that didn't do what was claimed for it. It was 6 months old, and TomTom (quite legally) wouldn't refund it as I didn't buy it from them, while (illegally) PC World wouldn't as I hadn't returned it within 28 days. Needless to say I won, but they'd have got away with it with most consumers I think.

I've thought for a long time that consumer law in the States lags a long way behind Europe. It certainly explains the wild, or at least heavily overstated, claims we often see in American infomercials. "Buyer beware" is not a reasonable way for manufacturers and retailers to behave in this day and age.