Subscriber Discussion

Have You Ever Been Offered Extra Product In Lieu Of A Warranty?

U
Undisclosed #1
Oct 05, 2015
IPVMU Certified

I recently placed an order directly with a manufacturer for 100 LED 4-ft T8 tubes. The product normally comes with a 5-year replacement warranty.

They were discontinuing the line and wanted to know if I would consider taking 5 tubes for free instead of a warranty. Has anyone heard of this practice?

Certainly has advantages to both parties, IF the bonus is big enough.

Would you trade your camera warranty if you got a free one for every ten you bought?

UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #2
Oct 05, 2015

This is common with Asian manufacturers.

If the cost to ship the product overseas (and have them return a "new" or "fixed" item) is too great, then an up-front replacement is often offered.

The issue is defining with the manufacturer what should be a fair amount of product as substitute for warranty.

The manufacturer will ALWAYS understate their actual returns (we have done this with 3 manufacturers and in all 3 cases have had to re-adjust the quantities upwards after the first year). In one case, the manufacturer had stated a 2% "extra" policy (saying this was their actual annual failure rate) but it was upped to 6% in the second year (when we had the actual numbers).

Another thing to be careful of: you need to exclude any "recalls" or "extremely unusual returns" from the deal. If they produce a batch of 1000 widgets and they all go bad, this cannot be your cost to assume.

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