(And as I said to another commenter, I think it would be advisable in this thread for people to expressly acknowledge or disclaim any interest in or prior experience with any particular product)

(It would also help to know if you had a financial interest in or prior experience with this company)

1. found errors, e.g. where I used the incorrect exchange rate (and managed to work out how I had made that error, which I was impressed by)

2. found items which would appear to be errors except for context it did not know

3. flagged areas where it disagreed with me as to the correct tax treatment, but accepted that the law is ambiguous (and in some cases I preferred its interpretation after additional research and in other cases I did not)

4. flagged areas where it disagreed with IRS guidance, and only acknowledged said guidance after I provided links to it

5. provided highly inaccurate estimated tax calculations, and not been able to fix its estimates even when challenged

So my takeaway is that it is a very useful tool for tax, but perhaps unsurprisingly, it is not good enough to dump all your paperwork into and expect a shiny return you don't need to check. (Possibly it is if you just have a W-2 and no other substantial income, but I can't speak for that scenario.)

There was a dispute about whether the amount awarded was confidential or not (Uber contended it was; plaintiff contended it wasn't), but on the face of it, had plaintiff agreed to the confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses, Uber would have paid up.

I suppose it could be argued that Uber were trying to write in clauses they knew plaintiff wouldn't agree to, but it's not obvious to me that a different plaintiff wouldn't have agreed to confidentiality and non-disparagement.

(FWIW, it's not clear to me whether Uber have now in fact paid up; they made a statement to the Guardian that _suggests_ they have, but the fact that they didn't explicitly say so means I wouldn't want to draw that inference)

(Which is not to say there's not plenty to dislike about this whole case, including the fact it's forced arbitration...)

And if we go to Footnote 5 of the campaign's press release (https://repair.eu/news/one-year-into-eu-ecodesign-rules-80-o...):

> Sometimes, this situation is slyly camouflaged: Ulefone information sheets list a link that looks genuine (https://www.ulefone.com/pages/support-centers), but if you click the ‘parts store button’ on that page, it takes you to Aliexpress. When ordering parts from non-EU web stores, you as a consumer would be the importer and as such, responsible for paying import duties as well as ensuring compliance with all regulations.

But if you actually click through to that page, it is very specifically _their_ AliExpress store, not just any old random page on AliExpress. It's not clear to me that that's actually non-compliant with the Ecodesign regulation, even if it's not ideal that the consumer is the importer of record.

EDIT: Actually, on reflection, the importer thing might be more meaningful than I first thought. While the Regulation doesn't say so explicitly, it must mean that the spare parts be available for sale in the Union, and if the consumer is acting as the importer, then the parts are potentially not on sale in the Union. But the fact it is the manufacturer's store on a marketplace and not the manufacturer's branded subdomain is as far as I can see, neither here nor there.

I'm not sure if Ofcom's subsequent notification to WMF is publicly available anywhere.

* Regulation 2023/1670 provides, inter alia, that smartphone manufacturers must make replacement batteries available to consumers, except where the 80%/1000 cycle criteria is met, in which case replacement batteries can be made only available to professional repairers. There is also a requirement for it being able to replace the battery but this does permit use of non-trivial tools under certain circumstances.

* Regulation 2023/1542 provides that portable batteries (not limited to smartphones) must be readily end-user replaceable if they meet certain criteria unless the strict waterproofing/medical industry criteria are met.

I don't love piling on, but it still shocks me that people write without first reading.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/travel/shutdown-air-traff....

[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/us/politics/shutdown-air-....

[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/28/air-traffic-...