DragonRR wrote:
It is not fraud to take your car in for warranty work when your car has been tuned, it is not illegal to modify your car's ECU or mechanical systems. It is Fraud were you to hide the fact that the car had been tuned to achieve financial gain in some way... so, for example, you were trying to avoid paying for a blown engine which was caused by the mod. It is also fraud if you don't inform your insurance company that you have modified your car and make a claim under insurance.
Ok, let's be clear because I think you've confused warranty fraud with one of the other cooler victimless crimes. You also need to read your quote above carefully, it has an obvious conflict.
If you know your car has a remap and you drive it into an Audi workshop for work to be carried out under a warranty, you are committing warranty fraud. It means you know something about the car that could impact the outcome of warranty approval and that approval has a financial loss and gain ratio for both parties involved. Ergo, this is an act of warranty fraud, admittedly there is nothing afoot but you are still in the act of warranty fraud, that's the name for it. There are other 'reasons':
Reason 1, when taking out the warranty you are asked to the best of your knowledge, if there are any modifications to the car. There is clear contact information available within the policy should you, later, feel like you have not answered to the best of your knowledge or if circumstances have changed.
Reason 2, point 3.3 of the Extended comprehensive Warranty and Extended Named Component Warranty Exclusions.
"6. Vehicles modified in any way from the original manufacturer's specifications."
Reason 3, point 4.4 of the General Terms and Conditions - Looking after your vehicle
"You must take all reasonable steps to safeguard the Insured vehicle against breakdown/immobilisation and/or Electrical or mechanical failure."
Is there a defence for safeguard responsibility once a remap is in place? I'm pretty sure there isn't, however, I'd love to hear some people's creativity on the subject.
Reason 4, point 4.5 of the General Terms and Conditions - Fraud
"If you or any beneficiary claiming under this insurance makes a claim that is false or dishonest in any way, this insurance will not be valid and you will lose all benefits under it."
Not informing the warranty company of the remap is dishonest under the General Terms and Conditions and the policy as a whole, although, again I'd love know how it doesn't. It's worth noting that the policy states this as
fraud.
Correct, it is legal to modify your car's ECU or mechanical system unless it contravenes MOT and the car is driven on a public road.
DragonRR wrote:
I do agree that in the EU the manufacturer may be legally entitled to void your entire warranty if they detect a modification to the ECU but I have serious doubts they would test that in court.
They would not have to test this in court, the policy issuer would just void your whole warranty, they're well within their rights and it save them on legal fees. There is a clause in the warranty policy (that the user agrees to), it reads, 4.3 Claims - our rights:
"We can take over and carry out the defence or settlement of any claim. After we have made a payment, we can pay to take legal action to get back any payment we have made under this warranty insurance."
What's important here firstly is that the policy holder has agreed to this, secondly the policy issuer runs the house which means the policy holder signs over any recourse once the warranty work has been paid out. The insurance company own you. The only thing you can do is complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service and that won't end up in a court of law, that will be arbitration. There will be no legal precedents and the decision is final and accepted without prejudice. This way the policy issuant can 'learn' from an outcome and change their policy offering thus avoiding a floodgate opening.
Lastly, the policy issuer always holds the strongest Top Trump card - you failed to tell them about a modification. You can argue all you want, maybe even winning a battle proving that a remap didn't cause a named warranty component to fail. To which they will always counter with "but you failed to tell us about a modification". This will always win because you withheld information that they could have used when deciding to insure your car, in effect, you have violated their rights. The simple explanation is: you're a liar.
DragonRR wrote:
IP only comes into it if you are infringing copyright.. reselling the modified software... which you aren't. Actually this does bring into question what happens if you are to later sell the car with a modified ECU of course. Technically this may well be copyright infringement because you only have the right to sell the unmodified software.
The iPhone jailbreaking situation is complex and AFAIK there has never been a test case. Apple state in the EU that jailbreaking voids the warranty, they cannot do this in the US due to the Magnuson-Moss act. In the EU we have the argument of interoperability
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_jailbreaking ; which may or may not hold any real water.
Interestingly the UK is pretty good with reasonable usage of IP and more importantly the wrappers that protect the IP. However, in most parts of the continent you'd be breaking a law when getting around any DRM or security protecting the ECU. So while you may be allowed to make changes to an ECU, it would be the act of circumnavigating the ECU protection that will leave you legally legless and the proof would ironically be the modified ECU code.
No matter where you go, there you are.
