Low-Tech Warranty Bar Raised Higher

It’s not just high tech companies that are making it harder and harder for customers to claim their warranty coverage on defective products. Reader responses to our recent discussions concerning unextended extended warranties, hidden time limitations, and surprise repair fees demonstrate that manufacturers of a wide variety of devices have plenty of expertise at stiffing customers.

“I bought a Remington ‘Log Master’ electric chainsaw from Lowes,” wrote one reader.

“After a very short period of time, not even enough to dull the first blade, it just stopped running. Click the switch, nada. Under the warranty ‘policy’ Lowes told me that they needed a deposit which was actually a bit higher than the fifty bucks I paid for the product just to have a factory-authorized shop look at it. Part of the problem was that I had gone on vacation right after purchasing it, so the failure occurred shortly after Lowes’ 15-day return limit had expired. Some one-year warranty, huh?”

The many gripes about GE’s service operation dragging its feet on flat panel TV repairs struck a chord with another reader. “This is not only a TV problem, but any appliance. I purchased a Westinghouse microwave oven that was DOA. The store that I purchased it from could not replace the item. According to them, GE would not replace the unit without it being checked out by their repair people. I made an appointment that I had to wait three weeks for. The repairperson came, took the microwave off the wall, and tried to troubleshoot the problem. He put a fuse in and it blew out right away — guess what, that was the only fuse he had. He said that he was going to order parts and a fuse. When it came I had to call back and make another appointment, and in the meantime I called everybody that I could and wrote letters. The part finally came three weeks later and I called to set up the appointment. Three more weeks, the tech arrived and, you guessed it, that part did not fix the problem. He then ordered more parts and the same story repeated. I kept bugging the store and customer service at GE, and kept writing letters. I finally got to the Chairman of the Board and the next day I was called by someone in his office. One week later I had a brand new machine. I don’t think you should have to jump through hoops to get things fixed, but that seems to be the way things are going.”

Manufacturers can make a warranty worthless by sending incompetent repair people, or by insisting you send the product to them. “I had something like this happen on a water heater in my new home,” wrote another reader. “Guaranteed for eight years, but it leaked after two. To get a replacement, I had to drain and disconnect the water heater, package it up and ship it to the manufacturer a few states away, wait until they determined it did leak, wait for the replacement, then install it myself. If I was lucky, I might have hot water in a couple of weeks. The cost of shipping would pay for half or more the price of a new one at Sears and they’d come out to deal with warranty issues. Quality is dying, support is dying even faster.”

One of the worst horror stories I heard involved a motorcycle dealership. “A few years ago I had a warranty case outside of the IT industry that took my breath away,” the reader wrote. “I had an engine failure in a new Russian Ural motorcycle, about a year and a half into a three-year warranty. The dealer told me that the manufacturer was slow to pay so he was refusing to do the work. Ural USA would not even speak to me, they kept telling me to talk with the dealer. The dealer refused to talk to the manufacturer anymore and told me to call them. I wound up spending $1,000 to have the engine pulled and shipped to a different dealer willing to do the work. At least the original dealer eventually came to ruin — I heard he was raided by an EPA swat team. I didn’t even know the EPA had a swat team, but the story told around here is that they ran his customers out at gunpoint, seized all his records and all his bikes due to illegal importation and violation of EPA rules.”

So what do you when you just can’t get the manufacturer to fix the product? Another reader heartily endorsed the solution a SanDisk customer had adopted with a faulty drive. “I found myself with a huge grin after reading about the reader’s solution to his SanDisk problem: smash it and ship it back in a box full of dog doo. I have done something similar, and though NOT cost effective, the stress relief brought about by doing something such as this is undeniable. My most recent experience was with a Sears Craftsman shop vac. It was a small, 1-HP model and as I did not wish to have to buy this vac again and again, I figured that I’d buy Craftsman. Hah! The vac was a joke to cut this story short, spewing out huge clouds of dust and trash at random intervals, causing much more of a mess than it picked up. After repeated calls to customer service and the Sears store where I had purchased it, I got the idea that nobody cared and would fight me tooth and nail in a battle to get a replacement vac so I did what felt good — I took that hunk of junk outside onto my driveway and threw the thing as high into the air as I could manage without pulling my arm out of its socket. Up, up it went and then it came back down with a most satisfactory velocity, arriving onto the cement with a furious cacophony of noise as well as shards of red and black plastic flying everywhere. Yes, I felt immediately immature and embarrassed as well as self-satisfied and content. It cost me $100 but it was going to cost me that anyway — I might just as well grab some entertainment value from this situation … let your inner self spirit shine through!”

What do you think? Post your comments about this story below.