A Warranty Isn’t What it Used to Be
320 words eaten alive on August 25, 2010 - Filed Under Business, Electronics -
Many years ago when I started this business pretty much everything I sold had a warranty of 1 year or better. Nearly all those items could be returned to my distributor for repair/replacement. During the last few years though there’s been quite a shift in the way a warranty is handled, most items now have to be sent back to the manufacturer by the end-user (the customer). It started with monitors, then other spread to other items. Now there are very few things that can be brought back to me to take care of. Power supplies, hard drives and RAM are the only ones that come to mind.
When I first got Rock Band there was a big pink piece of paper inside the box that said “If you have problems with this hardware DO NOT return it to the store it was purchased from, please call this number….” I’ve been seeing that a lot lately. New gadgets especially, I just checked out an iPad warranty for the hell of it and it’s 1 year manufacturer, but you can also buy extended time direct from Apple.
It isn’t just with little stores like mine though, even the big guys like Walmart are the same way now. You get a 14 day period during which you can return something to Walmart, but after that if the item dies you have to deal with the manufacturer directly. Not that it’s a bad thing generally, but in a lot of cases it means you may have to pay a few bucks in shipping fees, but it also tends to be faster if you deal direct. If an item comes back to me, I ship it back to my distributor, then they ship to the manufacturer. So while you lose the personal service, you also cut out the middle men involved in the RMA process!
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