Hi @Holly_Davies,
Very excited to hear that Restart is about to storm parliament - fabulous news.
I must explain that my answers will seem rather odd unless I point out that I’ve run a PC repair shop since the late Middle Ages.
Virtually every day. Take the most basic of laptops as an example with a simple fault like a cracked lid. Even though it’s a non-electrical fault, I’ll still be scrabbling around in the the dark corners of the internet looking for parts. (Most) manufacturers have no interest in selling parts or even allowing user/owners to know details of the parts, so they can be sourced elsewhere.
If this is useful, the worse example I see is printers with severely blocked heads. We junk tonnes of functional units because the heads are no longer replaceable (and refuse to unblock). As the whole printing sector is modelled on ink sales, the devices are classified as disposible. If, by some miracle, a replacement part is sourced, the chances of stripping and rebuilding a consumer inkjet without wrecking it are slim.
Took our Ford CMAX for MOT at a local independent garage. They had to replace the ABS electronics, a part they had to buy from Ford. They swapped the part & the car wouldn’t start due to serialisation. It was eight weeks before Ford came to the garage to start the car.
Yes. We’ve handled thousand of warranty claims covering laptops and desktops and we advise customers that they needs to consider the data on their device as the manufacturer may dispatch a brand new unit. In essence, once the manufacturer has it, anything can happen.
When a ‘new’ device is shipped back to the client, often it isn’t new. More than once we’ve found old data on the ‘new’ device.
There’s a new trend with gaming/high-end laptops where the manufacturers don’t repair under warranty or replace, they simply refund the purchase price.
There is a threshold which people hit where the repair is so outrageously expensive, that they’d rather spend a bit more to have a totally new device.
Recently, a laptop motherboard was swapped under warranty. I was told that the part would have cost £570 (ex. fitting charges). The customer has only paid £550 for the laptop.
I’m putting out a call for YOU to share your stories of a time when the Right to Repair was needed in your life. For example:
) so I had to heat-weld and epoxy-glue the old one back together 
