Category index
Cases where leaving, repairing or owning the thing you paid for was made deliberately difficult: paired parts, withheld tools, features held behind a subscription, cancel flows built to fail.
The complaint alleges the one service tool capable of every repair is reserved for authorised dealers, while the version farmers and independent shops can buy cannot do the job. Deere denied its practices were unlawful, then conceded its dealer tool has characteristics that differentiate it from the rest.
A US class action ended in a $1.5 million deal over updates that produced error messages when third-party cartridges were installed. A year earlier a French group had filed against Brother, Canon, Epson and HP over deliberately shortened printer and cartridge lifespans; the fine there was 15,000 euro.