Warranties

[simon c]

I had an interesteding experience this weekend in regard to warranties. Some good, some bad but overall it was all useful info.

To set the scene, I bought an Alto-Kew pressure washer from Bunnings (Nunawading) in October. Cost about $400. I was very happy with it until about 2 weeks ago it developed a major leak somewhere in the internals.

I took it back this weekend to Bunnings and they mentioned to me that the Alto-Kews have a repair warranty and not a replace warranty so they have to go back to the manufacturer and they will repair or replace. But he said he wasn't certain and I'd only had it a month so he'd check.

He discovered that I had bought the only Alto-Kew model that came with a replacement warranty. All the others came with a repair warranty. They were going to replace it but had no more in stock so he said he'd give me my money back if I bought another one. He recommended the GMC which was $100 cheaper and said he would give me the difference back. He said the GMC pump is made in Italy and not China.

I saw this as an opportunity to spend a "free" $100 so looked at a power planer. This time I had the warranty issue right at the front of my mind and was intrigued by the variation. I ended up buying the Blue Bosch (the green bosch models are really getting quite poor).

I had a long chat with the bloke from Bunnings who implied that they like selling the GMC's because they have the good warranty. They don'y come back any more often than the more expensive models and when they do, they just give the customer a new one and there's no hassles. With some of the more expensive brands they have to send them away which creates paperwork and disapointed customers. He was complaining about Makita as they can't accept them for warranty repairs and you have to take them to an authorised repair dealer yourself.

Anyway, what did I learn?
1. Not all warranties are the same, even in the same brand.
2. A replacement warranty is much superior to a repair one.
3. Some of the Bunnings staff are very helpful. Much thanks to the balding American who works in the tools shop at Nunawading. I think his name is "Red".

[Termite]

Hmm, I thought that statutory warranty applied. ie 12 months repair, replacement or refund, the choice is the customers. Am I wrong AGAIN?

[journeyman Mick]

The thing to watch for is that generally, stuff with a replacement warranty is disposable because the manufacturer doesn't actually produce any spares. Thus if the tool breaks down after the replacement warranty runs out it must be thrown away as it's no longer repairable. No doubt the manufacturers have done their homework and figured that for their target market it's more economical to simply replace the tool than to produce and carry a large inventory of spares. I find that for some applications a disposable tool is fine (eg: grinding concrete) for others it's not (SCMS).

Mick