If you're a DIY enthusiast, then chances are excellent that you know exactly how satisfying it is to successfully do things yourself. Whether it's repairing a small electronic device yourself, soldering a circuit board, or even changing out a faucet in your kitchen or bathroom, there's a special sense of satisfaction that you simply don't get from having someone else do it.
But at the same time, it's also nice to know that if you needed to, you probably could have a skilled repair person do that job for you if that's what you chose. Call up your local plumber, or visit your local electronics repair shop, and hopefully, they can help fix the problem if you either can't or don't want to do it yourself.
Choices are great things to have when you need something repaired!
That's exactly what farmers and right-to-repair advocates have been arguing with heavy farming equipment manufacturer John Deere for years now, and it's finally come to a head in January. On January 15, the US Federal Trade Commission, together with the state attorneys general of Illinois and Minnesota, officially filed a federal lawsuit against John Deere over this ongoing matter.
The suit against Deere and Company (the OEM's legal name) alleges a decades-long throttling of both farmers' and independent repair shops' abilities to repair and/or maintain equipment manufactured by Deere. Such actions are prevented, says the suit, by increased computerization of Deere machinery through increased reliance on electronic control units (ECUs), which are then only accessible via special software tools that John Deere also controls access to.
These software tools are generally available to John Deere dealers, but not to independent repair shops or farmers who might be knowledgeable and/or interested in doing repairs and maintenance themselves. Thus, the suit goes on, owners of John Deere equipment then have no choice but to rely on John Deere dealers for maintenance, parts, and repair. You can read most of the full text of the complaint (with some key redactions) here.
Now, even if you haven't personally experienced this issue with John Deere products, the broad strokes make the potential problems pretty clear. By making it so that customers only have one avenue for maintenance, spare parts, and repair, then John Deere and its dealers can charge whatever amount they want. If the argument that competition breeds innovation is to be believed, then why isn't competition allowed here? Because profit says the FTC's complaint.
Another key element in the issues faced by farmers here is that farming is completely reliant on seasons. If you're growing things outdoors, you only have a certain amount of time in your geographic location where you can plant whatever crops it is that you choose to grow. The same is true of other tasks in the life cycle of that crop, such as harvesting. If you miss either of those windows, then your entire crop could be ruined for the season. You could lose those crops, be out an astronomical sum of money, and maybe even have your entire farm go under.
By funneling farmers to authorized John Deere dealers that may not have open service windows when they're needed to satisfy strict farming schedules, and who may be located hours away from where a given farm (and the machinery) sits, you can see that the problems only grow increasingly more complicated.
It's Not Only About John Deere, Though
While this specific lawsuit has been brought by the FTC against Deere & Company, the issues it raises aren't solely restricted to this company. If you've followed Right to Repair fights in the electronics and automotive worlds over the past several years, much of what the FTC's lawsuit alleges against Deere will sound familiar.
In a way, it's almost like playing Mad Libs with Right to Repair complaints. Here, it's about tractors; there, it might be about your car and its dedicated dealer repair tool. Or your motorcycle and its dedicated repair tool. At the heart of this issue is a question of ownership. If you buy a thing, you own it, right? If you've paid for your car/motorcycle, it should be your car/motorcycle; not Ford's or Toyota's or Subaru's or KTM's any other manufacturer's, right?
And nominally, it might be.
But as the owner, it should then also be up to you whether you choose to take it to your local Ford/Toyota/Subaru/KTM dealership for service, whether you hire a local independent mechanic to work on it, or whether you choose to get out your tools and do it yourself. Same with motorcycles. Same with everything.
As I've said before and will say again, vehicle-as-a-service does absolutely nothing good for owners. It hurts parts retailers, it hurts enthusiasts, and it also hurts the future. I didn't grow up wrenching, but I still credit my curiosity and the sense that I could learn how to do things if I tried to my grandparents, who were endlessly DIY about all kinds of things. My curiosity and willingness to learn and try new things is, in many ways, their legacy. And it's one for which I remain eternally grateful.
We stand to lose a whole lot more than just access to our vehicles if these type of shenanigans continue, and if something isn't done to rein in companies effectively strangling your access to the things you've bought from them. It's potentially a seismic cultural shift, away from having a thriving culture of DIY enthusiasts to just having a mass of people who are increasingly disconnected from our vehicles.
Is that really what we want for ourselves? Or do we want to be able to fix it with a hammer and just go on having fun outside? I know which I'd prefer, but how about you?
