ACCC zooms in on ag machinery after-sales

The ACCC has released a discussion paper focusing on farm machinery after-sales concerns including warranty limitations and data ownership and is seeking farmers’ feedback about their experiences to determine the next course of action.

The discussion paper,

“Agricultural machinery costs a lot to purchase and maintain. We are concerned by a number of issues surrounding the sale and servicing of agricultural machinery and want to better understand the extent of these,” said ACCC Deputy Chair, Mick Keogh.

“A number of barriers, including warranty clauses, may be preventing farmers from using an independent business to repair or service their equipment. We hear that this can result in delays at critical times.”

The Australian Consumer Law provides certain rights when a consumer good breaks or fails to perform as expected.

However, these protections generally don’t apply to agricultural machinery and a purchaser’s recourse for faults is usually limited to the manufacturer’s warranty or paying for the repairs themselves.

“Manufacturers have significant discretion as to what warranty protections are offered and how they apply, and we’re concerned that farmers may not be aware of these limitations,” Keogh said.

Additionally, most modern agricultural machinery has extensive data collection capabilities, but manufacturer policies on data ownership and management may raise privacy and competition issues.

“Production data becomes more valuable to a farmer the more they accumulate it, so the lack of any clear rights to this data may create a barrier to switching between brands of machinery,” Keogh said.

“We want to hear about farmers’ experiences when purchasing and obtaining repairs to agricultural machinery, and encourage them to contribute to our survey."

The survey is open until April 5, 2020. Interested parties can also make submissions via the ACCC consultation hub until April 5.

The ACCC said it will analyse information collected from submissions and the survey and will use this to determine its next steps.