The Right to Repair is Crucial Outside Computing As Well
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer.
You know what really just rankles my ass?
How everything you buy is designed to make it difficult to repair properly.
I never thought it would be so difficult to find a replacement set of pads for my eyeglasses, but apparently Walmart makes non-standard nose pads now.
The goal of this must certainly be that if you have one pop out and can’t find it anywhere, the glasses will dig into your nose until you break down and buy a new pair.
Walmart used to offer a full one year repair or replace guarantee, but now they want to sell you what you used to get for free, for an additional $60 per pair.
Obviously, that’s not happening. I have a habit of just letting old eyeglasses pile up and I tag them with what year I got them and what the prescription was when I’m finished with them.
So I ended up washing and wearing a pair of last year’s until I could get some nose pads. It turns out that nobody makes them with the push-in retainers of the original size.
And they’ve also made it so that if you try to use stick on adhesives, it’s just a temporary fix at best. They come right back off the next time you wash the lenses.
So I got a standard set of 15mm nose pads and a bottle of super glue, and pressed a replacement into the frame and propped it up on a set of pliers until the glue dried everywhere.
I don’t know how long it will hold but it seems fairly permanent.
The vision insurance pays for a new set in 9-10 weeks anyway and I’m obviously not going to replace an entire pair of glasses, at full price (over $400 USD), at this point.
I think it’s fairly dirty of Walmart to resort to making common replacement parts that people will need of a non-standard size, just to have this happen and aggravate them into buying another pair to make the nose irritation stop.
If my State had any sort of right to repair law, I’d probably complain to the Attorney General. I may do it anyway.
Luckily, the screws are still in good shape because it looks like they’ve used an uncommon size there too.
This makes me wonder if this isn’t some scheme not only to sell more eyeglasses, but an attack on the “eyeglass donation bins” where you can put old prescription glasses that don’t fit you anymore. So it is also an attack on charities that help the poor █