New Zealanders' testimony about short-life consumer culture

Tuesday, 3 June 2025

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New Zealanders have shared their experiences of appliances designed to fail, and expensive but unrepairable tech, with MPs on the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.

Parliament is considering establishing a limited “right to repair” to hold overseas manufacturers of things like whiteware and TVs accountable for repairing goods sold in New Zealand, and to prevent manufacturers from voiding warranties for using third-party parts or unauthorised repairers.

And for many people, disappointed by short-life appliances, and a right to repair can’t come fast enough.

People’s testimonies and experiences indicate where they think companies are letting the public down.

Landfill nightmare of ‘planned obsolescence’

Amanda Galea, the zero waste manager at the Manurewa Community Recycling Centre, said: “We receive items for recycling, with e-waste being our biggest category that we recycle.

“Even though we have a great recycling partner, that does their best to break things down into the right recycling stream, there are many products that shouldn't be in there at all. All they need is a quick fix to extend their life by years in some cases, but this isn't offered by retailers and manufacturers at this time.

“Too often customers bring in electronic items that need only a small repair’ but the parts aren’t available or the product is made to be unrepairable.”

‘I grew up in an age of repair’

Alexandra Dempster told MPs: “Wastage has grown to an almost unmanageable level. Our tips (and little, out-of-the-way roadsides) are full of broken items that could possibly have been repaired if this was supported by manufacturers. I grew up in an age of repair. This is not a ‘green’ item but a common sense item.”

Ingrid Perols said: “I have a number of personal experiences with items that have been repaired, and some that have not been able to be repaired. It is striking that the ones that have been repaired are almost always older items, for example my Bernina sewing machine from 1989, my food processor from 1984, my electric hand beater from 1967.

“These items have all been successfully repaired by an electrician at the local 'repair cafe'. Other items such as a food processor from 2018 and a stick blender from 2019 could not be repaired as it was not possible to access the interior of the items.”

Built to fail costs consumers a fortune

Diana Elliot said: “I have had many experiences of being unable to have products repaired that should have been repairable, or for which the repair was disproportionately expensive. Some examples. A Canon Pixma Printer/copier/scanner which had a broken printhead which could not be repaired or replaced. They wanted to sell another printer. I am now without a printer. The push and stay down mechanism on my toaster broke. I took it to a Repair Cafe. The mechanism was so flimsy it had broken and was unable to be repaired or replaced.

“My fridge malfunctioned. I was shocked when the manufacturers engineer who came to look at it made a comment, the gist of which was they expect consumers to replace their appliances every five years. I had to put up with the fault or buy a new fridge. I put up with the fault. When you consider there are 5 or 6 major appliances the cost is unaffordable for many households.

“I damaged the wing mirror on my Toyota Corolla. The teeth on the gear that enabled it to retract to the car body were broken. The whole mechanism needed to be replaced for a cost of over $900. Outrageous for a small part on a car produced in the hundreds of thousands a year.”

Take action on meaningless ‘error’ codes

Alicia Craig said: “I’ve had to throw away perfectly usable products due to a lack of repair options. For instance, my washing machine displayed an error code, and the only option was an expensive service call. With the information provided by the Bill, I could have easily repaired it myself, saving money and reducing waste.”

Donghyeon Kim said: “You have no idea what the code means. You call in a repairer, who diagnoses it as a blocked drain filter and clears it at your expense.”

He said manufacturers should be forced to make error codes freely available.

“With this information, you immediately diagnose the fault as a blocked drain. The manufacturer information also tells you how to remove the drain filter and clean it out. No repair is needed. You’ve saved a call-out charge and your washing machine,” he said.

Show everyone the repair manuals

Adam Cheney, volunteer at a Repair Cafe in Wellington, said: “We volunteer our time to fix things, but there are plenty of folk that do this for a living. Pushing manufacturers to provide tools, spares and documentation along with encouraging them to design things so that they can be repaired (screws over glue, for example) will help these businesses thrive too.

“The requirement for consumers to request information like manuals from manufacturers, who then have up to a month to respond, is inefficient. This information should be readily available online for both consumers and repairers.”

Blood spilt due to intentional anti-repair design

Alistair Kwan said: “There are… injuries caused by manufacturers’ attempts to prevent repair. I have sustained many cuts when trying to get appliances open for obviously simple repairs or a battery replacement, only to be thwarted by gratuitously welded plastic, glues, one-way latches and other such barriers.

“I have also encountered unreasonable choices of screw and bolt head, which serves primarily to inconvenience, and secondarily to drum up trade in screw and nut drivers that amount to yet another waste stream.”

‘Manufacturer would not have repaired it’

Debbie Laing said: “I recently had an expensive stereo system repaired through the Otaki Repair Café. One very small part needed replacing, but without it, the whole system would have needed to be thrown away creating unnecessary e-waste, and several thousand dollars to replace the old unit with a new one.

“This kind of service was only available through the generosity of the man who repaired it. The manufacturer would not have repaired it.”

Require labelling of ‘hostile’ practices

David Go asked MPs to consider requiring simple and clear disclosure of characteristics of the items for sale which are “hostile to consumers”.

These would include labelling of products reliant on batteries that cannot be replaced, items that are not designed to be disassembled or require specialist tools to disassemble, and products that rely on cloud services or a subscription to function.

Big problems with fast fashion

Fashion designer Amy Conlon believes there should be a clothing right to repair.

“The fashion industry should be required to make repair a standard offering, and consumers should have the right to access mending instructions, suitable materials, or services at a fair price,” she said.

“In my previous role at a New Zealand knitwear brand, I was involved in promoting a lifetime repair initiative that allowed customers to access mending services for their garments. I saw first hand how meaningful it was for people to extend the life of their clothing, and how visible mending could even enhance the value and emotional connection to a garment. The initiative not only diverted textile waste but deepened customer loyalty and care.”

Douglas Renwck told MPs: “The fast fashion industry is completely out of control, emitting around 8-10% of global emissions, destroying soil quality, and draining water, and contributing to the microplastics crisis that is giving people health problems. For this reason, I strongly suggest consideration of financial incentives for refurbishment of clothes instead of dumping them in poor nations.“

Fast fashion was based on marketing designed to achieve “psychological obsolescence”.

“We ban advertising in the tobacco industry, and the same could be done for fast fashion,” he said.

Ban “ridiculously expensive” spare parts

Duncan Smeaton said: “I get very frustrated by products that are generally well-constructed except for one or two minor but critical components that appear to be considerably weaker than the rest of the product. These critical and weak components are often unobtainable, or seemingly ridiculously expensive, so that the product is hard to repair and has to be thrown out.”

Dave Doggart said: “The bill should contain a clause about the affordability of spare parts. It is not uncommon where parts are available that one minor part is often priced prohibitively.”