What should we as consumers expect the practical difference to be?
If my kettle has a warranty and breaks down, it's on the manufacturer. If it's only within the design lifetime? What if 10% don't last the design lifetime, wheres the cut off if relevant? If I buy a kettle that lasts the design lifetime, but is deemed not to for the purposes of the law, do I get compensated?
These are genuine questions, I am in favour of publishing this kind of information, it occurs to me that poorly thought out rules would be useless though.
Depending on the law some EU countries already expect the manufacturer to be able to fix or replace products that failed due to hidden defects within the average service life. So a manufacturer has a vested interest in declaring realistic figures because they are expected to support them. The "1000 year kettle" would have to have spare parts available for the period.
But my point is, what is lying? If a kettle is designed to last 10 years, it's reasonable to expect that 100% won't last that long, so what percentage should we reasonably allow to break in that time, 10%? 20%? 50%?. If the manufacturer was found to be lying, do I with my still working kettle get compensated?
And your answer raises other concerns, who is this consumer advocacy group that's going to lead this? Is it reasonable to assume some proportion of people are going to direct their complaints there? This to me doesn't seem like an easy thing to police at all.
the company is dissolved, when it lies. bad for shareholder value, and a very good incentive to be honest, but this doesn't seem to fit too well into todays corporate scheme.
If there's reasonable doubt (ie a large number of complaints about the kettle failing), the manufacturer has to provide sales statistics and test results and will be judged accordingly. As for the consumer advocacy groups: it's pretty standard in Europe to have these (and they are the only ones to initiate something like class-action). As for the metrics: everything is measured, I'm sure, we can come up with a sensible metric?!
If my kettle has a warranty and breaks down, it's on the manufacturer. If it's only within the design lifetime? What if 10% don't last the design lifetime, wheres the cut off if relevant? If I buy a kettle that lasts the design lifetime, but is deemed not to for the purposes of the law, do I get compensated?
These are genuine questions, I am in favour of publishing this kind of information, it occurs to me that poorly thought out rules would be useless though.