Ask an authorised service centre what it costs to fix a cracked TV panel or a dead washing machine board and you know how the conversation ends. The quote lands somewhere between insulting and absurd, and you’re browsing replacements before the technician finishes talking. Late last week the Competition Commission finally moved, releasing draft guidelines targeting repair and maintenance costs across electronics, appliances and durable goods.
The direction is right and long overdue, but the draft stops short of the technical lock-ins that actually strangle independent repairers. Price transparency is step one, and the remaining steps haven’t been drafted.
The car playbook, applied to your kitchen
The scope is wide. Phones, tablets, gaming consoles, televisions and audiovisual gear, washing machines, tumble dryers and even medical devices all fall inside the draft. With households spending more than R200 billion a year on technology and durables, nearly all of it imported, the stakes are obvious.
The proposed measures echo what the Commission extracted from carmakers between 2021 and 2024. Manufacturers would publish transparent pricing for spare parts, diagnostic tools, software and repair information. Dominant players would have to justify spare-part markups when faced with a prima facie case of excessive pricing, and they couldn’t prescribe minimum repair charges or keep documentation locked inside authorised networks.
That last point matters most. Buy a flagship TV like the LG OLED W6 and the panel is the product. When a replacement panel costs close to what the TV did, the maker is calling the device disposable. Consoles tell the same story. An Xbox Series X with a failed HDMI port shouldn’t be a write-off, yet board-level fixes get discouraged at every turn.
I did some digging of my own. As of Monday there’s no draft PDF on the Commission’s website, just a media statement and a call for comments that started circulating around 21 August. For a process inviting input from thousands of small repair shops, the paper trail is thin.
The gaps that will decide whether this works
Start with what’s missing. I see no explicit action yet on parts pairing, serialised components or software locks, the tactics that let manufacturers refuse activation after third-party repairs. If our guidelines only force price lists into the open while a paired part still bricks your device, we’ve won the paperwork battle and lost the war over who’s allowed to fix anything.
Warranty anxiety is the quieter blocker. These guidelines target commercial practices, not warranty terms, so people will still hesitate to visit an independent shop while a device is under coverage. Until disclosure rules like those that calmed the automotive sector carry over, many will keep paying authorised premiums for peace of mind.
There’s also a blunt economic objection worth taking seriously, and it surfaced the same day the guidelines dropped:
Not a fringe worry. If servicing margins tighten, manufacturers recoup elsewhere: pricier hardware at launch, thinner bundled support, or quiet exits from certain repairs altogether. Layer on import dependence and a volatile rand, and even perfect local transparency can’t force down a part priced by global supply chains, as anyone who tracked the chaos around AMD Ryzen 5000 pricing already knows. Supply sets floors no guideline can legislate away. Transparency exposes markups. It doesn’t shrink them.
Medical devices deserve special scrutiny too. Safety accreditation there is legitimately stricter, and the Commission must separate genuine clinical barriers from convenient excuses for shutting independents out.
Bigger than the repair quote
This could be a jobs story before it’s a savings story, and barely anyone covered that angle. Independent repairers are overwhelmingly small businesses, many in townships and peri-urban areas. When the automotive guidelines opened access to parts and repair data, they created real openings for historically disadvantaged providers. Apply that template to electronics and you get a genuine SMME growth sector that keeps value circulating locally instead of shipping broken goods to landfills.
Which ties into the environmental dividend. Every washing machine repaired instead of replaced is e-waste deferred, and South Africa’s circular economy debates have circled this for years without teeth. The guidelines never mention sustainability explicitly. They should, because repairability is climate policy wearing overalls.
The missing piece is consumer muscle. The automotive fight had organised advocacy behind it, and Right to Repair SA stays active, though as of last week its focus was still car matters like accessories and extended warranties. Electronics has no equivalent ecosystem yet, and most people don’t know they can lodge a complaint.
Watch three things from here. First, whether the final version adds hard commitments on software locks and parts pairing rather than pricing disclosures alone. Second, how loudly manufacturers resist sharing what they’ll call commercially sensitive information. Third, how quickly the comments window fills with submissions from repair shops, because regulators respond to volume.
Treat this as the opening bell, not the finish line. The Commission proved with cars that it will stare down dominant firms when the evidence stacks up. If you’ve been quoted a repair costing more than half a replacement, spend ten minutes on a submission. Real quotes from real consumers shape better guidelines than industry lawyers do.
