A John Deere dealer refused to service the tractor of a right-to-repair advocate until he filed a complaint with the FTC.
No evidence that John Deere is using it locked down repair ecosystem to punish critics here:
A farmer in Missouri said he had to go to complain to the Federal Trade Commission in order to get his tractor repaired by the only John Deere dealership in his area, showing how without the right to repair farmers are bound by the whims of the corporations who have a monopoly on repair.
Jared Wilson had a problem with the AC in his John Deere tractor. It wasn’t running and he needed to finish planting his corn and soybeans. The tractor would run, but finishing the plant would be a miserable experience in the heat of the Missouri spring. According to an affidavit Wilson filed to the FTC, he called the local John Deere dealership and asked for an appointment. The manager told him he didn’t want his business.
In the FTC complaint, Wilson is asking the commission to open a consumer protection investigation.
Wilson and the manager talked on April 14, according to an affidavit about the incident filed with the FTC on April 16. Wilson told Motherboard he didn’t know the AC had gone out until temperatures started creeping up in April. “When it hits 70 degrees it’s almost unbearable inside the cab because it’s all just glass and you’ve got a super hot motor sitting in front of you,” he said.
Knowing he’d never make it through the rest of his plant without a little cooling in the tractor, he called his local John Deere dealership: Heritage Tractor. He got the manager on the phone. According to Wilson’s affidavit, the manager said that, “I was not a ‘profitable customer,’ due to my repeated repair service complaints and written notices to John Deere’s corporate office about my dissatisfaction with Heritage Tractor’s repair services.”
According to the affidavit, Wilson felt the manager’s words were “a veiled threat that if I continued to complain to ‘outside people’ about my dissatisfaction with Heritage Tractor that I could or would no longer authorize [sic] repair assistance from Heritage Tractor in the future.”
Wilson is a fierce and vocal advocate for a farmer’s right to repair their tractors. He’s testified about it in the Missouri state house, been interviewed by NBC News, and is quoted by name in a complaint to the FTC.
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When Wilson started farming in 2013, there were three different repair shops within 30 minutes of his farm. Now there’s just one: Heritage Tractor, the store Wilson is constantly at odds with.
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A lot of this wouldn’t be a problem if Wilson could repair his own machines, but John Deere has taken pains to make that very difficult, if not impossible. “What I think kind of gets lost in this is it’s not just about ‘Can I repair it without all this information?’ It’s, ‘Can I diagnose what the problem actually is?’” he said. “Anything software related that has to do with the controller, we just don’t have any tools for that.”
Biden has promised to do something about this, but hasn't yet, which makes no sense. It's good policy and good politics.
This is nothing but a power grab and a exercise in rent seeking by the manufacturers.
Whether it's Deere or Apple, these policies are universally loathed by their users.
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