Last year was a big year for the right to repair movement. Oregon and Colorado both passed laws protecting the right to repair, including protecting consumers against the pernicious practice of software pairing. But there’s still plenty of work ahead.
Consumer Reports (CR) aims to protect consumers’ rights to repair the products they already own, despite efforts by manufacturers to prevent access to the tools and manuals necessary to fix items either at home or by independent repair shops. Manufacturers are also building their products with features that prevent consumers from repairing them, such as batteries that are impossible to replace or software that ties a device’s parts to the device itself. These practices lock consumers into a costly cycle of replacing broken devices rather than repairing them, and generates literal tons of electronic waste.
CR recently conducted a nationally representative Right to Repair Survey of 2,154 U.S. adults during the summer of 2024 showcase the effects of these policies on how consumers choose when to repair and when to replace their devices.
Broadly, the survey found that when consumers were deciding on whether or not they should repair a product, seven in 10 consumers focused on the cost of the repair, while roughly four in ten (43%) looked at whether they can repair the product themselves. It’s clear that keeping repair costs reasonable is essential for ensuring that consumers try to repair products rather than replace them.
For most people they’d like the option to be able to repair products because it costs less, they like it when products last a long time, and it reduces waste.
To dig further into repair trends, the survey then looked at three classes of devices: large appliances, small appliances, and portable rechargeable electronics such as cell phones, computers and wearables.
Americans Try to Repair Large Appliances
When it comes to large appliances such as washing machines, fridges and ranges, 60% of respondents had an appliance stop working in the last five years, and of those, 58% of them ended up replacing the broken product. Of those that ended up replacing their product, 26% tried to repair it but couldn’t.
For the 36% who were able to repair their product, half at 48% repaired it themselves or had a family member or trusted friend make the repair, while 27% went to an independent repair shop. Access to independent repair services is serving an essential role for those who cannot repair these large appliances themselves.
For those who didn’t repair their large appliances, we asked why. The two most common reasons were that the large appliance was too old to be worth repairing, selected by four in ten (43%) of these consumers, and that it was more cost-effective to replace it, also selected by four in ten (42%). Two in ten (19%) of these consumers said the repair professional couldn’t fix it or told them it was not worth fixing. Other reasons included a lack of parts, an inability to find a repair shop and that it would take too long to fix.
From a policy perspective, a lack of independent repair shops, especially in rural areas, can contribute to the challenge of finding a repair person and getting a repair done in a timely manner. Most consumers can’t live for several days without a fridge, for example.
Finally, 39% of Americans who have owned a large appliance that broke or needed repairs have disposed of it because they could not find someone they were happy with to fix it, which translates to one in three Americans (34%) overall.
Americans Toss Small Appliances Instead of Repair Them
When it comes to small appliances, repairs are less common, but failures are not. Two out of three Americans (68%) had a small home appliance such as a toaster oven, blender or coffee maker stop working well enough to use in the past five years, but most of those people (87%) decided to replace the appliance. Only 14% tried to repair their broken small appliance but ended up replacing it, while 72% simply bit the bullet and replaced the item.
Unfortunately, of those who elected to replace their small appliance, a majority threw it away or still have it lying around, which means the lack of repair for these small appliances leads to real ecological harm.
Smaller Portable Electronic Devices Don’t Get Repaired Either
Repairs were also uncommon in the portable rechargeable electronic device category. Our survey focused on what happens when the battery powering these devices, which include wearables, smartphones, laptops and anything else that needs to be charged periodically, stops working. Almost two-thirds (62%) replace the device entirely while roughly one-third (29%) replace the battery.
However if manufacturers provided a battery replacement, 62% said they would replace the battery as long as it would not void the warranty, and another two in ten (18%) would replace the battery even if it would void the warranty. This is an obvious way manufacturers could make repairs more accessible, both by providing a battery replacement option, making it easy to replace the battery, and ensuring that replacing the battery wouldn’t void the device warranty.
For those who replaced the device, generally they didn’t choose repair as an option because it wasn’t cost-effective or because they wanted to replace the device (possibly because it was too old). A few (12%) reported that they thought of such devices as essentially disposable.
Finally, we asked people to imagine a scenario where manufacturers of portable electronic devices provided information about how long you could expect their devices to last. Then we asked people if that would affect their purchase decision if they were buying a new device. Unsurprisingly, two out of three (66%) Americans said that it would affect their decision about which device to buy.
This is good news for several CR efforts both on the repair front, and when it comes to better indicators on products about how long the software that may power those devices will get support. Today, consumers are spending money on products that are not easily repaired and which may lose critical support updates at the manufacturer’s discretion. This is the kind of information consumers should have at the point of purchase so they can make an informed decision.
