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0 pointspromiseofbeans1y ago0 comments

It's not as good for the environment, though.

Some companies like Apple try to make up for this by replacing broken devices, then refurbishing and reselling the formerly broken device.

0 comments

pjc501y ago

Hand-repair of mass-manufactured objects is really expensive, unfortunately. Especially in the West, where you require a bunch of scarce resources like "city land" and "human time".

dghlsakjg1y ago

Not if the manufacturer plans for it. The first macbook I had, you could replace the battery in less than 10 seconds. You could replace a defective ram stick in 5 minutes if you were going slow. The price of service was cheap enough that the guy who sold me the RAM let me watch over his shoulder as he did it for free.

consp1y ago

> It's not as good for the environment, though.

Depends on other laws, here they have to take it back and recycle it. This also applies to old appliances. I had some empathy for the poor guys who had to take my extremely cheap, completely rusted washing machine away when I bought a new one.

While repairing might be better, it's not the worst outcome to replace it.

throwaway20371y ago

My guess: These companies have an internal repair division that will try to sell it as "warranty repaired" later. Or, they sell it at a discount to a company that specialises in oven repairs. They will fix it, then resell it. My guess: Apple's devices are way harder to repair than your average oven or refrigerator.

nijave1y ago

They did at Kitchen Aid (American company) but only for higher prices goods. They'd refurbish stand mixers but not <$100 USD stuff like stick blenders or hand mixers.

Stand mixers were solid metal so I'm guessing a decent portion of the cost was casing/housing

At least in the U.S. this stuff tends to be called "manufacturer refurbished"

maxerickson1y ago

I expect the cost of the cast, cleaned up and painted metal parts is a small fraction vs stuff like assembly and overhead. The raw materials aren't that expensive and they have enough sales to use high volume processes.

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