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Join the right to fair repair movement
The world has a ballooning electronic waste problem. We produced nearly 59 million tons of e-waste in 2019 — enough to equal the weight of 162 Empire State Buildings.
This crisis is a result of electronics manufacturers’ deliberate policies. When manufacturers like Apple make their electronics unnecessarily difficult to repair, they encourage consumers to buy brand new gadgets and toss their old ones in a landfill.
This problem is entirely avoidable. If we were allowed to fix our own stuff, we could cut down on this unnecessary e-waste.
That's why we need you to tell your state representative to support our right to fair repair.
Aside from the sheer numbers, e-waste poses unique threats to our environment and health. E-waste is often hazardous and contains toxic chemicals, such as lead and mercury, that can leach into groundwater.
On top of that, electronics manufacturers’ lobbying power poses a distinct obstacle to the policies — such as legislation guaranteeing our right to repair — that would address this issue.
In 2019, for example, Apple lobbied California lawmakers to try to defeat Right to Repair legislation in that state, and the bill was ultimately pulled.
Against this sort of lobbying, we need to raise as many voices as possible. That’s why we need you to urge your state representative today to support Right to Repair legislation.
Despite this opposition from manufacturers, the right to repair movement is gaining momentum. Already, half the country is considering Right to Repair legislation.
This legislation could provide a crucial step in making it easier for us to fix our own stuff — and keep it out of a landfill.
But to give these bills hope, we need to make it clear that the public supports the right to repair. Tell your state representative: Let us fix what we own
What you can do to keep Wall Street in check
Under the Trump administration, this is what consumer protection looked like: $1 fines for rule-breaking banks and leaving Wall Street regulation in the hands of anti-regulation insiders. But that all could change soon.
The Biden administration has nominated Rohit Chopra, a true champion for consumers, to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Chopra helped build the Consumer Bureau from the ground up in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, and if confirmed, he would revitalize the bureau that Trump had left toothless.
But we’ll need every Senate vote we can get to confirm him. Tell your U.S. senators to confirm Rohit Chopra as CFPB director.
The Consumer Bureau was created to protect consumers from the sorts of abuses and reckless industry behavior that had first precipitated the Great Recession. During its first six years in the Obama administration, the CFPB was responsible for returning $12 billion to consumers.
But in 2017, the Trump administration turned the CFPB’s mission on its head. Over the past four years, it rolled back key protections for consumers and put supporters of Wall Street deregulation in charge of regulating Wall Street.
In one of the most glaring examples of this behavior, a task force created in 2019 to oversee financial regulations was packed with people representing the interests of the financial industry.
With Chopra at the helm, we have a chance to restore the Consumer Bureau. Tell your U.S. senators: Confirm Rohit Chopra.
With Rohit Chopra’s nomination, we have a chance to restore the CFPB to its original mission.
He has a tested track record at the CFPB. In the agency’s earliest days, he served as its first student loan ombudsman, where he spoke out against ballooning student loans. And in a Senate hearing on March 2, he promised that a CFPB under his leadership would make corporate offenders pay for defrauding consumers.
Recognizing the impending scrutiny banks are about to face, financial interests are highly motivated to block Chopra’s confirmation. That’s why we’re equally motivated to get him through the door.
We need every vote we can get. Tell your senator: We need Rohit Chopra at the CFPB.
Tell Amazon: No price gouging during a pandemic
Online price spikes of up to 200 percent on essential supplies shouldn’t have been allowed at the beginning of the pandemic -- and they certainly shouldn’t still be happening a year later.
But an analysis by U.S. PIRG Education Fund found that pandemic price hikes are still a major problem on Amazon. Out of 750 listings surveyed -- including masks, hand sanitizers, thermometers and patio heaters -- 409 saw price increases of more than 20 percent, and 136 at least doubled in price.
That’s unacceptable -- especially during a pandemic when so many of those products are essential to families’ health and safety. That’s why we’re calling on Amazon to do everything possible to ensure fair pricing on its site. Add your name today.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, unscrupulous sellers have been using the crisis to unfairly inflate prices of essential goods. And Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, has had some of the most egregious examples -- such as a 50-ml bottle of hand sanitizer for $459.
After more than 350,000 people -- plus dozens of state lawmakers and attorneys general -- called on Amazon to take stronger action to prevent price gouging on its site, the company insisted it has a zero-tolerance policy for price gouging. But nearly a year later, Amazon was not fully living up to that promise.
In December, a survey of 750 products across 15 different categories revealed that, compared to pre-pandemic costs, more than half of the listing prices increased by 20 percent or more. One hundred and thirty-six products doubled in price -- and one cost a staggering $4,000 more than it did last year.
Amazon has a Marketplace Fair Pricing Policy for a reason -- it’s time for stronger action to enforce it. Send your message to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos today.
Tell your senators: Don't let repair restrictions keep hospitals from fixing lifesaving medical equipment
Say you’re working in a hospital. If a key piece of medical equipment breaks down -- perhaps one of the ventilators that are so vital during this pandemic — you’ll want your technicians to be able to fix it right away.
Too often, though, medical technicians can’t even access the service manual they need to repair essential medical equipment because they’re blocked by restrictions set up by the manufacturer.
Lives are at stake: Join us in calling on the U.S. Senate to pass emergency legislation to give medical repair technicians the right to repair lifesaving machines.
Last year, our network partner U.S. PIRG Education Fund surveyed more than 200 medical repair professionals and found that nearly half of them had been denied access to the ”critical repair information, parts or service keys” they need to get broken machines up and running.
This is simply not acceptable — and it could put patients' lives at risk.
That’s why we need the Senate to pass the Critical Medical Infrastructure Right-to-Repair Act, emergency legislation that would give qualified repair professionals access to the service information and tools they need to fix medical devices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tell your senators: Don’t let repair restrictions cost lives. Pass the Critical Medical Infrastructure Right-to-Repair Act.
In a victory for transparency, Congress just banned anonymous shell companies
Tell Congress: Give hospitals the right to repair lifesaving equipment
Hospital technicians are being restricted from repairing the medical equipment that saves lives — and patients are suffering because of it.
According to a study by U.S. PIRG Education Fund, almost 70 percent of more than 200 medical repair professionals surveyed said their hospital has had to delay a patient procedure while waiting for a manufacturer service representative to repair a device.
There’s no reason that trained technicians should have to wait for a manufacturer to service a piece of potentially lifesaving equipment that they’re qualified to fix themselves — especially in the midst of a global pandemic.
So we’re calling on Congress to pass legislation ensuring that hospitals have the right to repair their own equipment. Will you stand with us, Friend?
Medical equipment manufacturers often put proprietary restrictions on service information and materials for the devices they make, and these restrictions are often driven by profit, as manufacturers tend to charge significantly more for repair service.
Moreover, the companies’ claims that their repair restrictions exist for safety reasons are unfounded — an FDA study concluded that hospital technicians provide perfectly safe and high-quality service on the medical equipment they use. And as it turns out, U.S. PIRG Education Fund also found that two-thirds of surveyed medical repair professionals reported that they fixed a device that the manufacturer itself could not repair.
Congress is working toward passing a new coronavirus relief package before the end of 2020. We need to make sure that medical right to repair makes it into this legislation — it could be lifesaving for sick patients across the country.
As COVID-19 cases surge across the U.S., the stakes couldn’t be higher — we need to eliminate these unnecessary restrictions on medical device repair so that hospitals can focus on saving lives.
Take action today by telling your U.S. representative to support medical right to repair legislation in the next coronavirus relief package.
While we have seen some progress — namely a handful of ventilator manufacturers who released previously restricted service information for their devices last April — there’s much more work to be done. And to compound the problem, many manufacturers that have maintained repair restrictions on their equipment are now no longer sending representatives to hospitals for repairs due to coronavirus travel restrictions.
But repair of medical equipment can be a matter of life or death for a patient in need -- and that’s why it’s so crucial that hospital technicians are allowed to put their skills and training to use maintaining the devices that help them save lives.
Tell your U.S. representative: Support legislation giving hospitals the right to repair their own equipment in the next coronavirus relief package.
Hand sanitizer shouldn't make us sick
These days, many of us are using a lot more hand sanitizer than we used to. We need to be able to count on it being safe.
But in just the past few months, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has identified a disturbingly high number of hand sanitizer brands that may be contaminated with toxic chemicals that can make you sick — or worse.
Despite that, the FDA still doesn’t require companies to test their sanitizers for contamination. Join us in calling on the FDA to implement strong testing requirements.
Contaminated sanitizers are seriously dangerous. In Arizona, contaminated sanitizers have killed at least four people and hospitalized dozens of others. One person even went blind.
All of these people used sanitizer products that tested positive for methanol, a chemical used to make antifreeze that is toxic when absorbed through the skin. Since June, the FDA has warned consumers about more than 80 brands of hand sanitizer that may be contaminated with methanol.
In August, the FDA recommended that companies do a better job of testing their sanitizers for contamination — but a non-binding recommendation just isn’t enough when it’s our health and safety at stake.
Tell the FDA to require testing of hand sanitizers.
When you buy something from the store — especially something to protect your health, such as hand sanitizer — you shouldn’t have to worry that it might kill you, blind you or make you sick. The FDA needs to step up and protect consumers by requiring companies that manufacture hand sanitizer to test their products for contamination in certified labs.
Tell the FDA: Require — don’t just recommend — that companies test their hand sanitizers for dangerous contamination.
As electronic waste piles up, we still don't have the right to repair our own devices
When manufacturers make it so we can’t repair our electronic devices, the unnecessary waste piles up — literally. Last year, we generated almost 59 million tons of e-waste worldwide. To put that massive number in perspective, it’s 162 times the weight of the Empire State Building.
It’s hard to say exactly how much of that waste could have been avoided, but we know it’s a lot. Manufacturers have an incentive to keep us buying new products instead of repairing the ones we already have, and they often make repair difficult or impossible.
Tell legislators in your state to support our right to repair our own devices.
Take cell phones, for example. Here in the U.S., we discard 416,000 cell phones every single day. But what other choice do we have when manufacturers make it unnecessarily hard for us to repair them?
One particularly egregious example: Last year, when the California Legislature was considering a Right to Fair Repair bill that would make it easier to repair our own devices, Apple sent lobbyists to convince lawmakers to abandon it.
Tell your legislators to listen to consumers, not manufacturers, and give us the Right to Fair Repair.
E-waste poses all kinds of environmental and health hazards. But even setting that aside, it’s just common sense — and it’s only fair — that we should be able to repair the stuff we own.
Join us in calling on your state legislator to support the Right to Fair Repair.
We need fair protections for our credit during this crisis
Americans shouldn’t have to worry about emerging from the current economic crisis with their credit reports seriously damaged.
But, whether due to financial struggles brought on by the pandemic or costly mistakes in their credit reports, many are at risk of suffering long-standing damage to their credit. Congress needs to step up and ensure that we won't be paying the consequences of an economic crisis with our credit for years to come.
Tell your senators: Pass a ban on negative credit reporting to help protect consumers during the COVID-19 crisis.
Credit reports matter — they’re used by lenders to decide whether or not to offer you a loan and at what price. They’re sometimes even used by employers to decide whether or not to hire you for a job. Bad credit can seriously cost you — negative information stays on your credit report for seven years.
As the dual public health and economic crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic rage on, American consumers are facing unprecedented financial vulnerability. If someone chooses to pay for food and other essentials instead of paying credit card bills on time, credit reporting agencies shouldn’t be allowed to penalize them for it.
We also shouldn’t pay the price for negative credit reporting caused by mistakes by credit bureaus. An analysis by U.S. PIRG and Frontier Group found that consumer complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) about credit reporting mistakes have seen a massive 86 percent surge in the months since the onset of the pandemic, compared to the same five-month period in 2019.
Add your name to Fair Share's call for Congress to ban negative credit reporting while Americans continue to struggle with the current economic crisis.
Record numbers of complaints to the CFPB since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis serve as a clear indicator of the huge financial challenges brought on by the pandemic. Yet neither Congress nor the CFPB have enacted strong enough policies to help struggling consumers protect their credit.
Under the Trump administration's appointees, the CFPB has not been doing its job when it comes to leveling the playing field for consumers. Rather, the agency has chosen to roll back key regulations on financial institutions and policies meant to shield consumers from predatory financial practices.
Congress, too, ultimately failed to include meaningful protections from negative credit reporting during the pandemic in the CARES Act, the federal coronavirus relief package passed in March.
But although Congress missed its first opportunity to fully protect our credit, there’s still time to give consumers the help they deserve. Tell your senators to step up for American’s financial health and support a ban on negative credit reporting during the coronavirus crisis.
Tell Google to end its ban on independent repair shops
How is this fair? Manufacturers can advertise on Google’s search engine, but Google bans independent repair shops from doing the same.
We need to have options when it comes to repairing our devices — it saves us money and reduces electronic waste. Sign our letter to Google asking it to end its ban on independent repair companies.
The ban came out of Google’s attempt to crack down on scammers posing as repair companies. To keep legitimate repair businesses from being shut out, Google said it would create a verification system that would allow them to resume advertising. But Google ultimately just blocked all repair and service companies from running ads.
Manufacturers can still advertise, but the problem with taking your device to the manufacturer for repairs is that the incentive for manufacturers is often to persuade you to replace the device rather than repair it. That’s more money out of your pocket and one more electronic device that’s now waste.
Independent repair services offer an alternative, but people have to be able to actually find them. Google is by far the biggest search platform and most important place for those repair shops to run ads and get noticed.