CDS Point of View: Right to Repair is a Data Center Priority, Too

Last week we read the Wall Street Journal article, “Spare Parts, Fix-It-Yourself Guides Hit the Market as Brands Ponder Repairability,” and see how this law affects not only car manufacturers, but technology companies as a whole.

Twenty-seven states across the U.S. have already brought up ‘right to repair’ bills in 2021. According to the consumer groups tracking the proposals, more than half of them have been voted down or dismissed. These bills are focused primarily on forcing the makers of consumer technology products (think cars, phones, and gaming consoles) to make parts more available and serviceability a greater priority. Advocates argue that consumers have a right to either self-service or more affordable, competitive maintenance experience. The companies that make these products usually fund the opposition in their effort to protect profitable replacement cycles and expensive, non-competitive service offerings. There has to be a better way than the current proprietary lock-in repair system for many of these product categories. Repairs are too slow and costly, often making it easier and less expensive to simply buy a new device.

The prevailing approach may be great for the short-term bottom line, but over the long haul it can turn a customer against a brand because of rigid and expensive customer service.  

In 2012 Massacusetts passed a ‘Right to Repair’ bill, and in 2020 it shut down loopholes manufacturers were using to side-step the law and not provide consumers full access to their cars’ diagnostic tools. Though the automobile industry has been the primary target, other companies like Microsoft, Apple, and HTC have been torn between providing modular, accessible, and repairable products or tightening their grip on diagnostic and repair information.

Worth noting: While the Massachusetts ‘Right to Repair’ updates in 2020 made getting diagnostic information for cars easier and more accessible to independent repair shops, it does not guarantee access to crucial parts needed to make repairs. Current options are to either go directly to the manufacturer and pay handsomely for the parts, 3D print parts, or use scavenged parts from older or discarded models.

In order to actually give people the right to repair, there needs to be another option for consumers: a new model where customers can go to a vendor’s partner to get spare parts, authorized by the device manufacturer, at a competitive price. This not only improves customer satisfaction as customers are able to keep their devices longer or customize them to fit their needs, but also it frees up their budgets to spend the savings on either accessories or other upgrades for their device.

This “Switzerland model” already exists for enterprise infrastructure technology. As an agnostic multi-vendor service (MVS) provider, at CDS we have excellent relationships with the leading infrastructure providers and world-class spare-parts and logistics to ensure our customers get the components and maintenance expertise they need, where and when they need them. We’ve seen things that started in the business sector slowly trickle down to the consumer level (the internet, for example), and as right-to-repair laws get passed, we expect to see more and more IT departments choose this kind of approach to extending the useful lives of their infrastructure products and preserve precious budget dollars for their companies’ digital modernization priorities