Don’t comment if you don’t want to actually contribute. How are people supposed to know these things before buying the equipment. What if they’re the only provider in their region? There’s a billion reasons why your comment doesn’t contribute.

What would you say if every manufacturer did this? Build your own? Further, you can't blame a person for not knowing that a machine has these planned obsolescence traps or repair-hostile traps: the manufacturer does not tell you the costs he has hidden. Further, this shouldn't be legal: it's little more than swindling.

Under that logic we don’t need any consumer protection laws.

You're getting downvoted, but this is really the only answer here. Companies won't stop acting this way as long as their shitty behavior is rewarded, and people keep rewarding their shitty behavior.

No amount of legislation is going to prevent them from doing this. This settlement even proves that they can keep doing it with impunity!