User:CorpoBlight/Product quality - and manufacturer incentives

Draft page. TODO: clarify whether this sort of thing is considered in-scope for this wiki. If not, maybe the mods know of a good alternative?

Product quality - and manufacturer incentives

Aside from the problem of corporations abusing their customers after the sale, there are other problems such as terrible product quality. Often it's very difficult for the prospective customer to determine whether a product costs more because it will last longer, or whether it's simply padding the manufacturer's bottom line. One thing that could potentially help here is a mandatory "Product Facts" label, not unlike the label found on foods in the US.

Drawbacks

It's argued by some that increasing the information given to consumers can, in cases, actually be detrimental to those consumers. Consider, for example, the fallacious argument that "if you can't pronounce it, it's not healthy" when it comes to ingredients. By that logic, I could create a new name for an ingredient, and that would cause it to become healthy - or vice versa. The "information can be harmful" argument would thus be that showing the ingredients can be harmful since it may influence the consumer away from something perfectly harmless.

Perhaps this is a trivial concern, but it seems prudent to try to avoid giving manufacturers the opportunity to compete through deception.

I've heard this argument promoted (for medical products) by Dr Stephen Novella, long ago on the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast. Of course, he explains it far more eloquently than I can.

Items for a "product facts" label

What sort of things could/should appear on such a label? Some data points may not make sense for some types/categories of product, such as consumables. Likewise, if a data point is too difficult for the manufacturer to determine or something they think is a trade secret, they'll make something up or sue to block the law.

Product quality / expected product lifetime

Before purchasing, I'd love to know how long my product should last (provided I take reasonably good care of it). But how do we turn this into a metric that isn't difficult for the manufacturer and that they can't deliberately distort?

Requiring them to state the product's expected lifetime (e.g. 5 years) could be difficult to compute and easy to distort. How do you prove that they knew material X would disintegrate rapidly?

Another measure that seems more reliable to me would be a statement about how an additional investment would affect the product's quality. If the following wording were required, the wiggle room seems very limited:

An additional investment of 25%, prudently applied, would result in a product that lasted {number} times longer.

The "prudently applied" bit is load bearing: it applies to the manufacturing process (materials, manufacturing employees, QA, NRE, etc), not to things like executive compensation, stock dividends, advertising, or funding a high-pressure sales team.

If the number is high, this tells the consumer that it's a high-margin product and they get less product for their money, while if it's low it tells the consumer that most of their money is going towards the actual product. The hope is that consumers armed with this knowledge will be able to choose quality products, providing motivation for companies to produce higher quality / longer lasting products.

Wage inequality

This one is more about social ills and corporate greed than something directly impacting the customer's experience with the product.

Corporations like to say that they must pay their execs the way they do to retain them, because "everyone else is doing it". Would they continue to do so if it impacted their bottom line? Would the court of public opinion impact their bottom line if consumers could easily find the numbers at the time of purchase? How forgiving will the court of public opinion be if gender-based wage inequality gaps are made public?

Our highest-paid executive makes {number} times as much per {period} as the lowest paid person in our facilities, including contractors but excluding unpaid interns, of which our workforce includes { percent | number }. The largest gender inequality gap we have is {percent}, for {role}.

Contractors (temp employees, lawn care, janitorial, etc) "in our facilities" are included so that a company can't improve this statistic by contracting for the low-wage work.

TBD: what about companies which contract with a third party to do manufacturing or other work that is not "in our facilities"? E.g. A brand where most or all design and/or manufacturing is contracted out to companies in regions with weak pollution/safety/labor laws.

Reliance on online connectivity / corporate servers

Will the product function if not connected to the internet? How much functionality is lost without a connection? Will the product continue to function if the company goes under or shuts down its servers? e.g for a "smart" lock, will I be locked out of my house if my router crashes?

Commitment to not remove features

Does the manufacturer commit to not removing any features that are present (or advertised) at the time of purchase? (Exception: temporarily disabling a feature if a critical security vulnerability is found.)

Do they commit to never changing any of the features present (or advertised) at purchase to features that must be paid for?

The "as advertised" wording is to close the loophole of advertising a feature as "coming soon" so they can retain more control over that feature.

Commitment to product security

If the product includes network connectivity, does the company certify that reasonable effort has been put into ensuring that the product is free from security defects that would impact the customer? e.g. backdoors, default passwords common to all devices (as opposed to a randomized password on the underside of the device), other common vulnerabilities.

Commitment to provide security updates

Does the manufacturer commit to providing pure security updates for the lifetime of the product? Through what date will such updates be provided? (In this context, a "pure security update" is one which _only_ fixes security issues and does not alter product functionality for better or worse.)

Commitment to allow product maintenance in the event the manufacturer is unable

If the the product line is shut down, or the manufacturer goes bankrupt or is otherwise incapacitated, do they commit to granting customers the right to documentation, source code, and other design documents necessary to

• repair and maintain the product
• create and maintain any online infrastructure that the product depends on or is enhanced by

Commitment to responsibly retain and dispose of consumer data

Does the company commit that any consumer data that happens to be collected will remain protected in the event that the company goes bankrupt or is sold? Does the company commit that it will destroy the consumer data rather than allowing it to fall into the hands of an unscrupulous new owner? How much money will be set aside to ensure this destruction? For how long will the company retain consumer data after its collection?