No rights, only incentives
I’ve been arguing all the time that the rights your government gives you are worth nothing. Anyone is free to violate any of the rights given to you unless the punishment is not severe enough to prevent it. The punishment is the incentive and works only to the extent that it is sufficient and everyone is rational. There is, therefore, no warranty against others violating your rights.
I’m writing this to provide a live example. A recently purchased Macbook Pro had a defect in either its logic board or left I/O board, which translated into the impossibility to use it. Shit happens, of course, but guess the time it takes to repair it in Apple warranty service in Russia, where I live. It’s undetermined. At least 2 months. At this point you would be probably thinking about violation of consumer rights law. According to the Russian law, warranty service can not take more than 20 days, and starting from the 10th day, the service provider must give me a substitute laptop for the period until they finish the repair.
So what?
They refuse to comply, saying basically “We know that we are breaking the law, but obliging to it would require us to hold an inventory of parts here in Moscow rather than order a new part every time some malfunctioning device is brought for repair (it’s the customs that takes 2+ months), which is too expensive for us. You can, of course, sue us, but that would not bring you your device any faster.”
You probably would think of law enforcement problems, but there are none in this case. I can go sue them, but the purpose of getting my Macbook faster is not going to be achieved. You would think that it’s some underdeveloped service provider in some underdeveloped country, but it’s an Apple Authorized Service Center and Apple Authorized Premium Reseller. Apple is aware of the problem, but is unwilling to solve it. I spoke to both Apple Russia and Apple USA but was forwarded to people whose job was to apologize, rather than solve the problem.
You would not expect it from Apple in the USA or Europe, would you? Even the nicest guys are driven by incentives.
13th July 2008
