Still today washing machines are sold without service manuals or wiring diagrams
Despite the right to repair movement, we are still forced to buy undocumented disposable machines designed with anti-repair shenanigans. Retail shops just go along with it, claiming no responsibility as they pass the unrepairable garbage onto the consumer.
Retailers are part of the anti-repair problem
Retailers know how to reach the secret menus for the machines but they are bound by a non-disclosure agreement with the machine makers not to inform consumers. Retailers are therefore part of the anti-repair problem. They are laughing all the way to the bank as the cost of repair service forces consumers to keep buying replacements while manufacturers tell consumers “fuck off- your product is too old to support”.
So new rule: retailers of appliances like washing machines must sell everything needed to hack-repair the machines they sell. Thus, they must sell:
- DMMs (multi-meters)
- oscilliscopes
- logic analysers
- ESR meters
- Bus Pirates and Flipper Zeroes (if a machine has a serial port)
- ISP programmers (if a machine has an ISP)
- Arduinos or clones thereof (to replace unhackable PCBs)
Additionally:
- Retailers must also supply at no cost docs on how to generally create an Arduino replacement PCB for each appliance.
- Retailers must organise free training for the public on how to use the repair/hacking tools.
- Retailers must deploy a host to publish any reverse engineered data supplied by consumers.
- Retailers must finance independently hosted support group forums organised for each appliance model (or each family of similar models). The retailer must not have moderation powers in the forums.