It surprised me that farmers aren't just ditching John Deere for alternatives that respect them. Visiting family on their farm in the early 2000's, they had been selling off their John Deere tractors and replacing them with Massey Ferguson, because they were annoyed with the poor servicing and parts delivery they had with their local shop/dealership. Way before this right to repair stuff happened.

I don't think other modern tractors behave differently to be honest. Deere probably cost a premium in comparison, but I think many farmers lease their work devices today anyway.

But yes, if they would own it, a right to repair would be very welcomed...

If you see a modern tractor on the streets next to a Ferrari, the tractor is probably the more luxurious and expensive vehicle.

Any tariffs on imported tractors? My gut says yes

I think a lot of them just are not aware of the issues until they dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars and used the tractors for years

Could that be true over the past decade that we've seen this in the headlines? Wouldn't there be plenty of bellyaching at the feed store?

Maybe they're really reliable and people are just finding out now...

I live in a wine region in central Calif where everyone has a tractor. We bought a Kubota, enjoy using it and get a lot of work done with it. We have a neighbor that bought a new John Deere and for about a 3 month period we endured nothing but abuse from him because we didn't buy "American". Then his problems started...

Did he empathize with you after or he remained bitter?

I'm guessing once he understood his tractor is a lemon he asked his neighbor for a taste of his sweet orange one.

The complete crack of Deere's firmware in 2022 must have had some impact on this.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/16/john_deere_doom/

Edit: 'Sick Codes confirmed that he believes John Deere failed to comply with its GPL obligations. "I'd love for them to come forward and explain how they are in compliance," he said.'

I wouldn’t really call that a “complete crack” (although it IS cool). There’s an _awful_ lot more firmware in a car or tractor than the display unit, and arguably it’s one of the less important modules in most architectures. Cracked versions of Deere Service Advisor are much more meaningful to the kinds of repairs farmers perform than firmware exploits are.

This is woefully inadequate as a remedy. The dollar amount is minuscule and the remedy time limited. Seems like they just got a license to continue business as usual.

10 years is just about when things start needing a whole lot of attention. Frankly no one should buy something like this unless a whole shelf of repair manuals is available, along with spare parts.

Isn't there some kind of three-strikes approach which judges can use against repeat offenders?

Woah, childs play money for the amount of pain, lock in, and money they’ve cost farmers.

Fines like these are simply considered Cost of Doing Business. Part of the reason why I love the GDPR fine structure so much (percentage base).

It has to hurt.

Literally. It’s less than a week of profit for JD. Not income, _profit_.

Let me check who the second largest shareholder is - ah its bill gates

Whenever I read John Deere my brain somehow adds Louis Rossman in there too.

One of the most user-hostile companies on earth. My John Deere lawnmower came with a fuel gauge that runs off a CR2032 that's embedded in epoxy. The battery runs out of charge in about six months and the gauge stops working. If you saw the gauge open and replace the battery it doesn't start working again. If you disconnect the gauge the lawnmower won't start. Replacement gauges are $60.

Chances are you might find a compatible replacement from China on Ali and the other usual sites for a fraction of the price.

In EU, a product such as this would have a 2 year minimum warranty. How long was yours?

They might be able to work around that by arguing it’s a consumable, so not a warranty issue.

Fuel is a consumable, and fuel gauge is also a consumable? You have lots of terrible judges if anyone could seriously consider that argument.

Again, it's a misconception(and I'm from the EU). EU law guarantees that for 2 years from purchase(it's actually 6 on most items) the seller has to fix any issues that arise from manufacturing faults. In the first 6 months of ownership, any fault is automatically presumed to be a manufacturing fault, after 6 months the buyer has to prove that it is. That is not the same as a warranty, if your laptop randomly stops working 2 years in you don't automatically get a right to have it repaired unless you can prove it failed because of a manufacturing defect(which as you can imagine, is actually quite hard to prove).

A lot of manufacturers have alligned their warranties to be 2 years long in the EU because they don't want to deal with the above, but it's completely 100% legal to offer a 1 year or 6 months warranty in the EU on any item. Your rights with regards to seller's responsibility are not affected by it.

That’s wild.They had to go out of their way to not wire it to the 12V.

They had to go out of their way to make it not work after you replace the battery with a good one.

This is where small claims court can have a HUGE impact.

Where I live, in small claims:

* Lawyers are not allowed

* There is no forced discovery. Sue John Deere, and they cannot ask for endless documents

* There is no way to assign costs on loss. If you lose, you never pay costs for the person you sued (which makes sense -- no lawyers)

* If you don't understand something, typically the judge will act as a mediator and explain it to you.

Yet meanwhile, suing in small claims will typically result in a big company using lawyers, who will try to pretend the above is not true. They will also rack up large costs for the company. In the end, sometimes a lawyer will appear in small claims court beside a company employee. However the company employee will do the talking.

My cost to file is $100. My cost to serve (via courier with tracking + sig) was $10. The company I went after, a fortune 500 company, I suspect spent >$50k on lawyers. While small to the company, it is truly a way to level the playing field.

What I find amusing here is, you could sue for a replacement unit. Explain what you found. Where I am, the max resolution is $30k, so you could easily get a refund for the tractor. Citing this issue while describing all of this, could result in two outcomes.

1) Deere employee claims (in their defense) that a batch of units were defective. They then deliver a fixed unit to you. While not perfect, it would be amusing, because they'll have just spent $50k in paying lawyers, along with making a proper unit.

2) You just claim that the tractor is defective, you can't sell it as it is, except maybe for parts. And you're not sure most of them are usable (weird electronics), and even cite that Deere stuff apparently is designed to break without authorized repairs. So how can you in good faith, even try to sell it to anyone??

So you ask for your time, costs, and full replacement costs with another brand.

Adding your wage/hr is somewhat typical here, for calls, research, sawing it open, all of it.

--

Anyhow.

If #1 is chosen and it breaks again, then you can repeat the whole fun process.

And I do mean it is fun.

$100 + I filled out a 2 page form, and then fedexed it to them. Their lawyers kept pestering me, to which I simply said "No" and "I don't need to give you anything, there's no forced discovery". This too was very satisfying, when I kept in mind how each call to me cost the company probably about $1k.

I mean, literally I'm sure each 5 minute call was around that ballpark. It was sheer joy. (Just don't discuss any aspect of the case in these calls.)

Then there was a pre-trail meeting where I, the company rep, and a retired judge sat. I was told that "nothing said here can ever be used in court", which made it more fun. The system's attempt to resolve before trial. That too was fun, for I got to finally tell the company, over and over, how wrong they were.

Anyhow.

It's a fun process.

>Then there was a pre-trail meeting where I, the company rep, and a retired judge sat.

This is them trying to intimidate you right? Or settle pre-court at least? Not part of the actual process where some retired judge always mediates before trial? It reads as gross.

Many small claims court procedures, at least outside the US, include mandatory mediation that would fit this description, and there is nothing gross about it.

Given that a "retired judge" was present, I assume it was such a mediation meeting (i.e. the retired judge was most likely a neutral, court appointed mediator, whose job is basically to tell both sides to please come to an agreement, and potentially tell one side to pull their head out of their ass and stop being idiots before the court has to tell them that they are being idiots).

Yes, exactly.

Hot take: it takes mental gymnastics to think that planned obsolescence is not fraud.

I personally like to call it "forced obsolescence."

Forced obsolescence is when the consumer always buys the cheapest product that checks their boxes, regardless of build quality. This forces you to either use cheap parts that you know will break, or leave the market entirely. The consumer may bitch at "planned obsolescence", but when push comes to shove and they're looking for what their next <thing> is going to be, they only look at the price and features, not quality and longevity.

We should be re-framing this in consumer's minds, and list "price divided by warranty" as an important dimension to evaluate a product on.

Depends how its planned. If its planned to fail but designed in a way thats cheap and easy to replace its ok. Because sometimes it can be the case that to much is spent over engineering a high use part when would be more practical to let it break and replace it every 2 years or so.

Sure, if it's truly planned. I think the tricky part tends to be that it's hard to distinguish between "planned obsolescence" and "incidental obsolescence".

Is there a bright line between cost reduction and planned obsolescence?

Obviously a small unreplaceable battery is not a good example for that discussion.

I think there is: It is the line between "not spending extra money to make sure it works" and "spending extra money to make sure it won't work".

There is a related problem with warranty: an inferior third-party replacement part may cause damage to higher-quality original parts. There is a line here between "making sure you don't have to deal with follow-up damage caused by inferior parts" and "preventing the use of inferior parts". This is a bit more blurry because most cases won't be clear-cut, and dealing with them will be a burden on the original manufacturer.

I think it is important that we reward the nice players as much as we punish the bad ones. A blanket "all companies bad" just means that no company has an incentive to be anything less than bad.

I had an interesting situation where we had failure of a Thule bike trailer wheel and could see where the connection-to-the-trailer design had changed from an earlier version (from the company that Thule bought). The wheel functioned the same, but you could see a clear difference which fully explained the failure. I expect it was a cost optimisation, and we only encountered the failure because we used it very heavily.

Edit: they also failed to honour their warranty commitments, but that was secondary.

Going out of your way to make sure the gauge doesn't work after the battery is replaced surely is.

I wonder if the gauge is just a horrible design that uses the battery to keep some memory alive.

Microcontrollers with persistent memory are not expensive, so something like that would just be horrible design, not something you could even try to justify as a cost reduction.

It's consumer fraud. It's shareholder fraud. It's environmental fraud.

Products like this simply shouldn't be allowed on the market. As if we need to destroy the planet so my Mother can enjoy looking at her 401k balance in the morning.

Don’t comment if you don’t want to actually contribute. How are people supposed to know these things before buying the equipment. What if they’re the only provider in their region? There’s a billion reasons why your comment doesn’t contribute.

"Don't buy their stuff" is exactly the right answer. You need to do your research before you buy big ticket items. It may not be true in every sector, but Deere has plenty of competition.

No, that's not the answer. It only applies to those people who have time and energy to spare to do that reasearch. I'm not talking just farming equipment, but ordinary items such as a vacuum cleaner or printer.

If you're low income, work 2 jobs, single parent, get home at 23:00 broken tired, want a meal but your fridge just broke down and everything is spoiled inside, you don't spend 2 more hours doing reasearch. You clean it, go to bed hungry, call repair in the morning (optional, if your hopes are high), and when they tell you it's not repairable, you get the first new fridge you can afford in a 10 min online search while on the bus/train/tram being late to work.

Reasearch, self-repair, is for wealthy people.

Self-repair is an average day on a farm. A farmer that does not research equipment they about to purchase, especially before spending a small fortune, is a fool.

That's like saying you don't bother learning what illnesses your animals or crops may contract, and how to prevent/cure them, because you're not wealthy. Buying a book and reading it, to the improve your abilities, is time well spent.

Most maintenance on a tractor is not major, and require basic skill and parts. It's the companies that don't want this, they want specialized technicians to come out to replace an oil filter.

I have a 30 year old vacuum cleaner, which I continue to maintain, which mostly amounts to stripping it once every 10 years and cleaning out all the filters that caked up with fine dust. Definitely cheaper to strip it myself one evening, than to pay someone to do it, or purchase a new one. It is like an hour of work for years of service.

It takes twenty minutes to figure out what other people are saying about a product. And even if you don't have time to do research, you develop a feeling for brands over time. I would never buy a lawn mower from Deere, not because this or that lawnmower is a known bad item, but because the company has had a bad reputation for decades.

A tractor can be almost a million dollar item now, and nobody spending a million dollars should be doing so without doing some research.

So the customer is 100% to blame then?

Do you seriously expect other companies not following suit? People need lawnmowers, so this can quickly turn into the same situation we have with the inkjet printer market.

Yes, I expect that. Low sales will concentrate the mind.

Please tell us - if you were buying one of these, would you specifically research how the fuel gauge works? Be honest.

How can you do research without victims complaining?

Why wouldn't victims complain?

Because when they do, they receive snide remarks like "just don't buy their stuff then".

Nobody is saying you can't relate your experience with this equipment. What we're saying is consumer action is enough to solve this problem. It just takes some time.

There's a certain type of customer that wants the dealer to handle parts and repair. But those guys aren't the lawn mower segment.

> What we're saying is consumer action is enough to solve this problem.

Citation needed

Might be hard for them to do that given this lawsuit is hard proof that it isn't true.

Is it? You've never been to a grocery store?

Well.. farming equipment are high 6 figures 7 pieces of business equipment (the lifetime operating costs are definitely in the 7 figures.) These are owned and operated by people who I would expect to do this type of research and critical thinking. These aren't normie consumers buying everyday appliances or electronics.

However.. farmers are a weird bunch and they are blinded by brand loyalty or will only buy from an "American" company which ironically allowed JD to stomp all over them because of their dominant market position.

I'm no farmer, but brand loyalty might have practical reasons, such as compatibility with attached farming equipment (plows?).

The attachment mechanism is usually standardized, so you can just switch between brands.

Nowadays a larger factor might be how close the next dealership/repair shop is. Some things are time critical, and when it breaks in this time, then you don't want to drive hours to have it fixed/get a part/ have a mechanic available.

There are some differences between the brands... And you can always be Clarkson and get a Lamborghini, even when it makes no sense ;-)

John Deere has had a terrible reputation for over a decade now. They've always used proprietary parts for the tractors. Do 5 minutes of research.

do your research before buying, they have this reputation ofr many years

it's like complaining about HP ink printer everyone was warning about for last 10-15 years at least

same should apply to Samsung TVs at least in the last 5-10 years

As an outsider, that’s literally what I’m doing: paying attention to the reviews. And some people are telling the reviewer to shut up and quit whining, thus encouraging them not to leave the review that I want to be reading.

Make up your mind. Do you want people to read and write reviews, or don’t you?

All great in theory, but in importing farm machinery, you need to take into account servicing options and warranty claims. Would be painful if you need to truck a harvester or even mower interstate for a warranty claim.

And it's not like these things are always available from a source with reviews. Reviews for new models are less likely to cover repair-access issues that will arise in a few years' time.

bruh dont sweat it. mainly everyone here is SF tech bros who have never worked a hard day in their life lol

What would you say if every manufacturer did this? Build your own? Further, you can't blame a person for not knowing that a machine has these planned obsolescence traps or repair-hostile traps: the manufacturer does not tell you the costs he has hidden. Further, this shouldn't be legal: it's little more than swindling.

Under that logic we don’t need any consumer protection laws.

Undoubtedly the poster to whom you're replying unironically agrees.

You're getting downvoted, but this is really the only answer here. Companies won't stop acting this way as long as their shitty behavior is rewarded, and people keep rewarding their shitty behavior.

No amount of legislation is going to prevent them from doing this. This settlement even proves that they can keep doing it with impunity!

Farmer here. We only run equipment made before 2000 and all of our tractors are from the 1980s. We badly need right to repair.

You should check out Kubota stuff.

I considered one for my last tractor purchase. The depreciation on them is hard to square. Units are selling or 1/3 of the original price with only a few hundred hours on them.

Why not purchase used then? 66% discount for a mint condition sounds like a steal.

That is what brought some interest, but at the same time there are no steals in farming. Although in the end it was largely technical. The M7 wasn't enough frame for my needs, but I didn't really need the HP of the M8 (which is actually a Versatile anyway). Other manufacturers offer models that more closely align with my requirements.

Seems like a small price for a big company. Shouldn’t there be some higher punitive fine for even trying this tactic? It’s basically zero cost for companies to be abusive.

Yes there should be. But there won’t be until US stops lobbying and American public elects lawmakers that work for people instead of their own pockets.

Unfortunately most people has a price in this world. Those who can’t be bought are just so rare.

And people that are likely to not be bought wouldn't enter politics in most cases. To enter and succeed in politics needs ambition and skillset that is diametrically opposite to a honest person.

The disgusting part is it’s not even that much money. $20k here, $50k there gets you a lot of political leverage.

no the settlements include many other conditions, but I agree the financial penalties should be larger

The stock is up 5% today. What’s the catch?

They settled, and paid pennies for being able to continue the status quo. Given that the headline is journalistic malpractice at best; and you asking this question kinda proves that.

> While the agricultural manufacturing giant pointed out in a statement that this is no admission of wrongdoing

Welp, gotta sue again in the future, hopefully lobbied laws in place to prevent whatever forced them to settle by then!

The whole point of settling is to end legal action. Admitting wrongdoing will be used as evidence against them by others who weren't party to the original suit. Any future suits will have far higher settlement costs, if plaintiffs are even willing to settle, since there's an admission of guilt right there.

You can thank the plaintiffs and their lawyers for accepting the settlement instead of pursuing a judicial remedy such as an injunction or finding of illegal behavior.

It is going to be tough to get me to think the plaintiff is responsible for John Deere the company continuing to be dickheads.

When I hear these kinds of "blame the consumer" apologetics it never resonates with me - I'm just not going to get on board with some hypothetical natural state where corporations are inherently bad like some sort of sick animal and it's on consumers to sacrifice and plan with care in order to help the rest of society deal with them.

Corporations are just big groups of people. If their victims can choose self sacrifice in order to help the group then the corporation people could just as easily do the same and that feels far more just to me.

> What’s the catch?

99m is a drop in the bucket. They were probably expecting more.

IANAL but my understanding with settlements is that It removes the possibility of the defendant risking a judgement of wrongdoing and causing more problems down the road, like having to fix their mistakes.

The market doesn't care. It is a big deal to some people here, but to the vast majority it doesn't change a thing (or doesn't seem to) and so the markets don't care.

There is a premium on risk reduction. I believe this is one of the reasons why companies like to incorporate in Delaware as the courts there are notoriously fast (I'm going off my memory of a Planet Money episode so could be wrong here).

The market expected a worst outcome ?

No, all US equities are up after the Iran ceasefire news.

You need to look at Deere stock after taking out the beta to the market.

Anticipating 10.01 years from now, when John Deere sends a new over the air update and the situation goes right back to where it was, with no one having access to their equipment.

There was a MoU between the American Farm Bureau and John Deere signed in 2023 that outlined right to repair. This consequently already altered Deere's business model with respect to IP and right to repair, and gave signals that a settlement was coming. In other words, the stock price already accounted for the change. Very few things catches stock prices by surprise in the long term.

The second paragraph likely answers some of your immediate questions

> The settlement also includes an agreement by Deere to provide “the digital tools required for the maintenance, diagnosis, and repair” of tractors, combines, and other machinery for 10 years. That part is crucial, as farmers previously resorted to hacking their own equipment’s software just to get it up and running again. John Deere signed a memorandum of understanding in 2023 that partially addressed those concerns, providing third parties with the technology to diagnose and repair, as long as its intellectual property was safeguarded. Monday’s settlement seems to represent a much stronger (and legally binding) step forward.

Yeah but it's only for 10 years...

it's not, they have to provide the knowhow to 3rd parties so they can carry on indefinitely

10 years for the buyer or the manufacturer?

So it’s back to as before in 10 years?

The second to last sentence I copied over talks about after 10yrs, basically saying they have to provide the knowhow to 3rd party tool makers and repair technicians, and that this settlement makes that more certain. (as I read it)

Good! Wonder if Louis Rossmann already mentioned that.

this is awesome. beyond happy to see it

Needs another zero, likely made 9 figures in revenue from this scheme.

I bought a ~completely mechanical tractor without ECU right under the 25hp cutoff that requires computer and emissions controls to get around this bullshit. The adding of DPF and/or SCR to agricultural diesels gave vendors cover to fuck the customer using the excuse of preventing emissions tampering.

Up to one third of that $99m goes to attorneys. Named plaintiffs get $25k each and class members get what's left over, which could be anything from $50 to $5k according to ChatGPT.

I wonder if they'll throw in free credit monitoring with that?