banner



How To Remove Void Stickers

I'd bet good money that you've probably run into a Warranty Void if Removed sticker at some point. After a decade of teardowns, we've come up across loads of them.

We've constitute them inside Xboxes, the PSP Become, Asus laptops, and fifty-fifty on NVidia graphics cards. Turns out, those stickers are non only unenforceable—they're illegal nether the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Deed. This federal police was put in identify to protect the rights of consumers. It imposes strict guidelines on manufacturers that offer product warranties. While the law has been in place since 1975, it's been largely ignored by manufacturers without penalty—until now.

The Feds are finally taking action confronting offending manufacturers. Last calendar month, Motherboard discovered that the FTC sent warning letters to Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Hyundai, HTC, and ASUS. The messages warn manufacturers about their violation of policy, and prepare a May ninth deadline to comply with requirements. Failure to do then could result in some serious legal activity.

FTC warning letter about warranty void if removed sticker
FTC Alarm Letter from Motherboard, Vice

Fright-mongering stickers are out of control

The number of lying stickers inside our products is ridiculous—and the effects of their misuse accept broad cultural and environmental implications. We've even seen new companies emerge that are solely dedicated to selling sophisticated tamper-proof stickers. These stickers scare people abroad from tinkering. They discourage repair—and that challenges the very idea of ownership. One time you've paid coin for a production, the manufacturer shouldn't exist able to dictate how y'all use it.

Our mission is elementary: we want teach the world to fix everything. But the well-nigh mutual objection we get when encouraging people to repair is, 'What well-nigh my warranty?'. Cheers to the crafty work of manufacturers, we've been brainwashed into thinking that opening a device voids the warranty. That fear of voiding warranties translates into fear of repair—even for hardware that is entirely out of warranty.

That ends now. These stickers are illegal. Tell your kids, tell your wife. The scaremongering party is over.

Mea culpa: We're guilty of this, too. We sell some RAM upgrade kits, and the sticker from our supplier has 'warranty void if removed' on the retention stick. We've asked them to knock it off and nosotros're definitely honoring the warranty, sticker or not. Nosotros're sorry for that, and we're working to ensure that this will never happen once again.

License to tinker

Hither's the bottom line. Nether US law, these are the actions that do not void your warranty:

  • Modifications or improvements (like painting the case of a device or upgrading its software), as long every bit those improvements don't impairment the product
  • Performing an upgrade that requires opening the device (like adding more than RAM, or a bigger difficult drive), as long as y'all don't damage the product while opening it
  • Repairs to fix accidental damage (like a broken screen), then long as the repair doesn't damage other components
  • Coincidental disassembly and tinkering for curiosity's sake, as long as you don't pause anything in the device

Encounter the pattern? It's your device—do whatever you want with it. Of course, it's worth noting that warranties won't cover any new parts y'all install in a device. (Although, virtually of the time, that new part ships with its own warranty.) For example, if you crack the screen on your brand-new iPhone, and then replace it with a screen you purchased from iFixit, that replacement screen is covered by our lifetime warranty. Fifty-fifty if you don't use an Apple tree Genius to replace the screen, Apple tree is still legally required to cover any manufacturing defects y'all run into with whatever other parts of the telephone, during the warranty period.

By the way: your warranty generally only lasts twelve months. So if that Xbox sitting in your living room is more than than a year sometime, the warranty is irrelevant.

Honest Abe fights for his right to repair
If Honest Abe says it's ok to open your iPhone, then that'due south good enough for me!

The only thing nosotros take to fear is fearfulness itself

So go ahead, stop living in fright of warranties! Every sticker you skin off is an opportunity to stick it to the man. Don't let the futile attempts made past lawyers at megacorps control your life. You've got the law on your side, so start removing those warranty stickers!

Warranty void if removed sticker on a device
Behold—an illegal warranty void if removed sticker in its natural habitat. Get him!

Nosotros desire to make sure that everyone knows warranty stickers are bullshit, and so we're embarking on a expert old-fashioned sticker hunt. Nothin' works better than a public shaming to go on manufacturers honest—which was the inspiration for our new contest. In conjunction with Motherboard, the bastion of fine reporting that blew this scandal wide open up ii years ago, we're going on a hunt for evil stickers. The competition rules are elementary: Post a photo of a "warranty void if removed" sticker to Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #voidifremoved. Allow us know in your mail what device you found the warranty sticker in (then we tin can catalog them accordingly by manufacturer). We'll be giving out our new Manta Driver Kits as prizes to our favorite entries through the stop of June 2022. The better your post, the more likely you are to win. Enter as many times as you lot want—we'll contact each winner on the platform they used to enter and re-share our favorites right here on our blog.

This isn't simply some other social media contest. We'll plow over the results of your investigation to the FTC and see if we can get them to send out another circular of letters.

One past one, we're beating downward the barriers to self repair. With the help of lawyers at the FTC and journalists at Motherboard—and citizen activists like you lot—nosotros tin can neutralize a weapon that manufacturers have been using in their entrada of fear, command, and greed.

Source: https://www.ifixit.com/News/10016/warranty-void-if-removed-stickers

0 Response to "How To Remove Void Stickers"

Post a Comment

Iklan Atas Artikel

Iklan Tengah Artikel 1

Iklan Tengah Artikel 2

Iklan Bawah Artikel