A former jockey who was left paralyzed from the waist down after a horse riding accident was able to walk again thanks to a cutting-edge piece of robotic tech: a $100,000 ReWalk Personal exoskeleton.
When one of its small parts malfunctioned, however, the entire device stopped working. Desperate to gain his mobility back, he reached out to the manufacturer, Lifeward, for repairs. But it turned him away, claiming his exoskeleton was too old, *404 media *reports.
“After 371,091 steps my exoskeleton is being retired after 10 years of unbelievable physical therapy,” Michael Straight posted on Facebook earlier this month. “The reasons why it has stopped is a pathetic excuse for a bad company to try and make more money.”
This very much sucks.
Edit: message received. Sorry.
I don’t think anyone should expect a battery replacement to be free after 10 years, but it shouldn’t cost $100,000
he’s not asking for a warranty claim or replacement, he’s asking for a repair service. it’s like taking your 10 year old accord to the service center to get some bushings/mounts/battery or whatever replaced
Respectfully requesting that in the future, you read articles before replying.
And:
This is all over a battery in a watch.
lol lol
You: he was about to move around for a few years and should be happy with that and accept his paralyzed state
dude’s paid $10k a year just to do what we can do for free. I don’t think that’s “pretty good”. if I pay $100k on anything it better work for life
It’s an exoskeleton, not a consumer electronic, what a disgusting thing to say
Yours is one of the most well deserved downvotes. Dude got paralyzed, literally cannot walk or stand anymore, received the exoskeleton (which was paid for in full by a fundraiser back in 2015) and the company simply decided “nah, we don’t touch anything older than 5 years”, knowing full well that this is NOT a disposable device and that Michael would need it for the rest of his life.
Keep in mind Lifewalk, the company behind the exoskeleton, didn’t even try to come up with a public bullshit reason to deny maintenance to a device that they knew full well would be used for the rest of the person’s life, or upsell a newer model.
I mean it’s a $100,000 medical device, basically. Imagine if they just abandoned any other medical equipment like that? Sorry, your pacemaker isn’t supported anymore.
That’s true for consumer electronics. However, more expensive things like cars are usually kept running for much longer.
Cars are probably covered differently by law, like minimum years producer has to offer replacement parts and such. Probably all boils down to the contract for that exoskeleton. Definitely not an excuse for that petty company trying to suck tens of thousands of dollars instead of a simple repair.