New York State passes the country's first 'right to repair' bill covering electronics. The Fair Repair Act would require all manufacturers who sell digital electronic products within state borders to make tools, parts, and instructions for repair available to both consumers and independent shops. Experts believe the new measure could have a drastic impact on the overall cost of repairing devices and products. Gay Gordon-Byrne, Executive Director of The Repair Association joins Cheddar to discuss.

Opening Bell

New York State Passes Landmark Electronics 'Right to Repair' Law

here to discuss is gay Gordon Byron, Executive director of the repair association. What is your reaction to the fair repair act? And what do you think it means for the average consumer? Well, we've been thinking about what this means for 10 years. Um, and what it means is that despite all, um, commentary to the, to the opposite, you should be able to fix your stuff. You bought it, it's yours. Um, you don't hurt anybody if you fix it, you might hurt yourself, but you don't hurt anybody else. So, um, it's an option that we've lost that we used to have. And I'm looking forward to seeing all those little repair shops come back. And to your point, it's something that people have been thinking about for 10 years. I think back to when I was in college still in college at least 10 years ago. Um, and having an iPhone that kept breaking and I had no other recourse other than to buy a new one at a price that back then I couldn't afford and was barely able to afford in terms of what this means for the manufacturers who been seemingly kind of fighting this for quite some time. Now, what does it mean for them? And also then what does it mean for customer warranties going forward? Because that's been a big caveat, even though the last couple of years as people have figured a way to figure, you know, fix some of these phones on their own. Well, let me hit the warranty point first. Um, it's a totally misunderstood situation. The warranty is only for a limited period of time and it only covers certain things. It doesn't cover in the case of Apple because you brought that up. Uh, it doesn't cover, it doesn't cover glass and batteries anyway. So if you fix your glass or fix your battery, you're certainly not interfering with any warranty. And the really more important part is it legally, Um, under a law that goes back to 1975, the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act, which the Federal Trade Commission is supposed to enforce. It's illegal for them to take your warranty away anyway. You are allowed to use independent repair or self repair or even use non original parts without voiding your warranty. So big myth there. Um, and the reality is almost all the repairs that are done post warranty are really on equipment that's already over a year old and in terms of the manufacturer side of things, how does it impact manufacturers this new law? Well, we hope that they might want to make products that are more easily repaired, but that's not a requirement of the law. The requirement is that if they're going to offer a repair service, which many of them do, they have to make sure that consumers and independent repair shops can get that same information in the same form. So it's not gonna mean very much in terms of a difference for them, They're still going to sell products. Uh, they're still going to offer their in house in warranty or out of warranty repair services, but now they're just be more options. Okay, so this is now law in new york. Do you anticipate that other states are gonna kind of follow suit here and passed similar legislation? Very much so? Um it's not quite law yet, I mean it's past the legislature, but we do have to get the signature of the governor um and the implementation date is not for a year anyway, but um, there's 40, 40 other states that have already filed some form another of um right to repair legislation for digital products and several of them are still in session and we expect several more bills that maybe died this year will not die next year. Um this is the first of what we believe will be many. I'm curious how does this compare to biden's executive order that calls for the FTC to enforce repair rights? Um It's actually very much aligned. Um We were part of the discussion with the Federal Trade Commission two years ago when they started investigating how loss of repair rights would hurt or help consumers. And they concluded back in May that there's uh there's nothing good that happens for consumers if they can't fix their stuff. So they then put this report out. The Biden administration echoed that report. Um but we've been working on this for 10 years. So um it's very much in alignment When you look at that effort over the course of of 10 years, the significant move now New York state obviously passing the first kind of right to repair bill. But as you mentioned moments ago, there's 40 other states that have similar legislation in various, you know, forms in in various points in the timeline and the pipeline. How do you see this overall kind of legislative picture impacting the broader electronic repair industry? Is this a new kind of life and wind coming into the industry? Yeah, that's a pretty good way to describe it. Yeah, most of the repair, both computer and cellphone repair businesses have been under tremendous negative pressure. They've been losing whole categories of products because the manufacturers have simply stopped Um providing access to parts, tools, diagnostics and firmware. So um it is a it is a return to an environment that existed 10 and 20 years ago and they will be able to do more. I mean the same skills that you have to repair one brand of, of cell phone, probably transferrable easily to another brand. And the only real difference is that for one of them you may be, you may be couldn't buy parts um and for another one maybe you couldn't get a schematic. So this will really make those businesses much more viable. Yeah, breathe, breathe new light to some of those businesses maybe even have, you know, new smaller small businesses develop as a form of kind of um the boom that that is to come for this I imagine. I don't have to buy a whole new phone and I can just take it to a local repair shop that is an easier and more affordable option um than than we've had historically, really appreciate your time and your insight? Gordon? Byrne, executive director of the repair association.