New York will let you fix your smartphone at the shop you choose – Crain’s New York Business

Gov. Kathy Hochul has signed a version of a two-year-old bill that ensures consumers can take their household electronic devices to any repair shop they choose, an attempt to bridle the power of the big technology companies. Tech companies and business groups, however, shrunk the scope of the rules by the time the measure left the governor’s desk.  

The so-called Digital Fair Repair Act requires the original manufacturers of certain devices to make parts, equipment and information available to all repair shops and consumers in the same way they provide this to their own authorized repair providers. The idea of the bill, originally introduced into the Assembly by Albany Assembly member Patricia Fahy in early 2021, was to protect competition and keep prices for repair low, even as consumer devices have become more complex and often difficult to fix.

As an example, if an Apple-made iPhone can be fixed only at the Apple store, the iPhone owner has no choice but to pay Apple’s price for repair. But if Apple must, by law, share tech specifications and sell equipment or parts to a local repair shop, the iPhone owner gets to choose who will do the work.

The governor’s office said that the legislation as originally drafted “included technical issues that could put safety and security at risk, as well as heighten the risk of injury from physical repair projects,” according to the approval memo.

With the bill’s passage, New York is at the forefront of a movement whose importance has been underscored all the way up to President Joe Biden, who asked the Federal Trade Commission early in his term to establish federal rules about the consumer right to repair.

During the summer, the FTC settled with grill maker Weber-Stephen Products and motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson Motor Company Group on alleged violations of existing federal law prohibiting manufacturers from invalidating warranties after consumers make repairs. Over the weekend Deer & Co. signed a memorandum of understanding with a group representing American farmers to ensure that farmers can make their own choices about repairing their equipment—which has also become increasingly high-tech and proprietary in recent years.

Back in New York, the meaure Gov. Hochul signed in the final days of last year covers a far smaller group of devices than had been put forth in the bill passed by the Legislature in June 2022, an update that could diminish the intent, advocates say.

“They took out the government, industrial and business-to-business users,” said Gay Gordon Byrne, executive director of the Repair Coalition, a group of independent repair shops and consumer protection groups.

At first, the wording covered all electronic devices with chips, a category, Gordon said, that includes iPhones, video game controllers, garage door openers and smart thermostats. The original bill also covered devices used in businesses, where maintenance contracts can be expensive. As signed, the new law appears to exempt devices that consumers already own and would apply only to fixing consumer electronics bought after the law goes into effect in July.

As originally proposed, the bill had many detractors. TechNet, a tech industry group based in Santa Clara, California, which represents major tech companies, lobbied against the bill throughout 2022, according to disclosures with the state Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government. TechNet approached a handful of state senators and Assembly members, including Fahy, and the executive chambers of the governor. The Business Council of New York State opposed the bill when it was being considered by the Legislature in the spring of 2022.

“Despite provisions claiming the bill would not require manufacturers to ‘divulge a trade secret,’ companies would be obligated to send significant amounts of data related to highly sensitive and technical aspects of equipment to almost any repair provider who requests it,” the business group wrote in a memo.