The three console manufacturers don’t always want to repair our consoles if they end up breaking down despite us having a warranty on them… but they might be forced to do so!

The three companies have stickers on their machines that say „Warranty Void If Removed.” It turned out that these stickers are illegal in the United States, VICE reports.

The Federal Trade Commission issued a letter to Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, HTC, Hyundai, and ASUS. The US laws (to be exact, it’s 1975’s Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act) state that a product sold for more than five dollars cannot have a warrant that has any restrictions on repairs. We’d quickly mention that in Europe (as well as the United Kingdom), the manufacturers reserve the right to refuse the repairs if they believe the warranty was voided. However, if there’s a known manufacturing issue which broke our product, or if a third-party repair voids the warranty, they will still do the repair for us.

Back to FTC’s letters, which can be read here – they gave thirty days to the companies to remove these stickers, and they also have to change their warranty policies. The parts that prohibit repairs, as well as the usage of third-party peripherals, were also mentioned in them. The deadline ends on May 9.

In short, the companies have to change their approach in the US after the FTC’s decision (otherwise they’d have to pay hefty fines), and it gives the customers more rights to say, repair their PlayStation 4s or use third-party peripherals.

Source: WCCFTech, Alphr