John Deere Pays $99 Million To Settle ‘Right To Repair’ Class Action
from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept
A few years ago agricultural equipment giant John Deere found itself on the receiving end of multiple state, federal, and class action lawsuits for its efforts to monopolize tractor repair. The lawsuits noted that the company consistently purchased competing repair centers in order to consolidate the sector and force customers into using the company’s own repair facilities, driving up costs and logistical hurdles dramatically for farmers.
John Deere executives have repeatedly promised to do better, then just ignored those promises. Early last year, the FTC and numerous states filed an antitrust lawsuit against the company for its efforts to monopolize repair. Though, with MAGA corruption purging any remaining antitrust enforcers from its ranks, it’s unclear if the FTC action will ever actually result in anything meaningful.
John Deere did however just have to pay $99 million to settle a different class action lawsuit brought by its customers. Under the settlement John Deere doesn’t admit to any wrongdoing, but will deposit the money into a fund to pay more than 200,000 John Deere owners for expensive dealership repairs since 2018.
In an announcement by the company, John Deere pretends they’re a consumer-focused enterprise:
“As we continue to innovate industry leading equipment and technology solutions supported by our world-class dealer network, we are equally committed to providing customers and other service providers with access to repair resources,” said Denver Caldwell, vice president, Aftermarket & Customer Support. “We’re pleased that this resolution allows us to move forward and remain focused on what matters most – serving our customers.”
Except if John Deere had cared about customer service, they wouldn’t be in this predicament.
In addition to intentionally acquiring repair alternatives to monopolize repair and drive up consumer costs, John Deere also routinely makes repair difficult and costly through the act of software locks, obnoxious DRM restrictions, and “parts pairing” — which involves only allowing the installation of company-certified replacement parts — or mandatory collections of company-blessed components.
More recently, the company had been striking meaningless “memorandums of understanding” with key trade groups, pinky swearing to stop their bad behavior if the groups agree to not support state or federal right to repair legislation. Several such groups backed off their criticism, only to have John Deere continue its monopolistic behavior, the FTC’s complaint notes.
The annoyance at John Deere’s behavior has driven a broad, bipartisan movement that’s in very vocal support for state and federal guidelines enshrining “right to repair” protections into law. Unfortunately, while all fifty states have at least flirted with the idea of a state law, only Massachusetts, New York, Texas, Minnesota, Colorado, California, Oregon, and Washington have actually passed laws.
And among those, not one has taken any substantive action to actually enforce the new law, something that needs to change if the movement is to obtain and retain meaningful policy momentum.
Filed Under: agriculture, class action, dealership, ftc, lawsuits, repairs, right to repair, tractors
Companies: john deere
Comments on “John Deere Pays $99 Million To Settle ‘Right To Repair’ Class Action”
So that’s $500 per owner, not even the price of a single tractor tire. And Deere is trying to pretend it puts any effort into it.
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… so NO actual solution to this widespread citizen problem — just a typical irrational outcome from a typically incompetent but very well paid government regulatory bureaucracy
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And that’s presumably before the lawyers take their cut…
From a purely self interested perspective, they have consistently done great things for John Deere’s stock prices for decades.
In summary: They won.
They are getting away with not admitting doing anything wrong, and the fine is negligible to them.
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But it wasn’t the only condition: “In the settlement, John Deere also says it will make repair tools and services more widely available. For the next 10 years, at least.”
That will be meaningful if enforced, and if the vehicle owners won’t go right back to being fucked in exactly 10 years. (Perhaps it’ll be like data leaks and free credit monitoring: happening enough that it never ends.)
Re: Re:
“more widely” is telling a tale.
Score one for regulation. This is a big deal, even if we need to keep pushing.
Re: Don't despair!
One day John Deere will release enough information that you can actually make your tractor start up again.
Until then, keep pushing. Those fancy tractors sure are heavy.
$99M ?
What is this? The price of 10 large tractors? Doesn’t take a whole lot of “I am sorry Dave, but I am afraid I can’t repair that” to get that “settlement” paid off.
“Under the settlement John Deere doesn’t admit to any wrongdoing, but will deposit the money into a fund to pay more than 200,000 John Deere owners for expensive dealership repairs since 2018.”
99,000,000 / 200,000 = $49.50
Does anyone see a problem here?
If you dont understand, JD(not the VPres) Has a PROPRIATRY SYSTEM for farming equipment. Including Computerized Hardware/software.
THEN the USA made a Law that the OWNERs of Such Computer products are NOT supposed to HACK the computers, EVEN IF, they are Old/new/not working/working.
So you have this 12′ tall Tractor, that you Insert a key into, and NOTHING turns on(computerized/theft prevention/Failed a hardware/software check = BSOD).
So to get it to work, there is NO RESET BUTTON. You now have to HAUL this tractor 100-1000 miles to repaired, or have JD send someone out in the next Week or 2. To hit a reset button or find Some other problem, CAUSE the computer WONT let it Turn on.
“In an announcement by the company, John Deere pretends they’re a consumer-focused enterprise:”
They are a Company, they can DO ANYthing to gain money from a Purchaser. Consumer Focused is EASY. Consumer Friendly? NOT.
So is <$50 per person of 200,000 WORTH this fight?
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You’re maths is out by a factor of 10 but the rest stands. 😉
From my understanding of corporate law of shareholder owned companies here in europe, the members of the C-suite are personally liable for their actions. So basically if you do anything that threatens the bottom line (e.g. support right-to-repair legislation) some shareholders might get it into their heads to sue you into the ground. They might not, but why take the risk if it m And share holding funds (e.g. Blackrock) say they are obligated to do this to protect the interests of their investors and the investors are sometimes just pensioneers that want to do something for their retirements.
A blame (shifting) game. 🙁