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I worked for a German retailer for a while and we had a lot of problems with customers not understanding the difference between the warranty the manufacturer gi
by jujjine 15y ago
I worked for a German retailer for a while and we had a lot of problems with customers not understanding the difference between the warranty the manufacturer gives and the "warranty" required by European law.
The first difference is who is liable. In the first case it is the manufacturer, in the second case the seller of the product.
The second distinction is to when it applies. In the first case Apple will repair anything that breaks during coverage, unless the damage is caused by carelessness. In the second case the "warranty" only applies to what is alredy broken when the seller gives you the device. Examples where this warranty does not hold, is when your hard drive breaks after 8 month or some connections ports stop working after 14 months although they once worked.
In summary the European warranty reduces to a protection for the customer, that the seller doesn't deliver a broken product. So in principle a manufacturer doesn't need to give any warranty at all, but the sellers would not be comfortable with that as in the first 6 months, they have to prove to the customer that the product was working at delivery, which is arguably impossible.
The only case where the European law results in additional coverage for the customer compared to the year apple gives, is when a defect was present at delivery and the customer only noticed it after one year and is able to prove that the defect was there at the beginning. I would like to see someone trying to prove that there was a manufacturing defect causing a connection port to disconnect from the motherboard after 14 month (or did you yank on that cord to much?...).
- dchest 15y agoThis is either a badly written law or a very seller-friendly interpretation of it. Surely, if a hard drives breaks after 14 months of use, it is either the consumer's fault or a manufacturing defect. The fact the liability is on seller shouldn't change the interpretation of "breakage". At least in the Russian consumer protection law, you can go to the seller instead of the manufacturer if your computer breaks, and it's up to the seller what it does with it -- if you don't get it repaired in 45 days, the seller must pay you the full price or send a replacement. I would like to see someone trying to prove that there was a manufacturing defect causing a connection port to disconnect from the motherboard after 14 month And that's why in some countries the burden of such proof is on the seller.
- jujjine 15y agoWell I don't think the problem is about wether it's seller or customer friendly but how the cost is distributed between the customers. If the warranty is high, the additional support costs will added to the product price, such that the support penalty is effectively shared between the customers. On the other side, if the warranty period is short, the product price will be lower, but a small number of customers must pay a lot to repair their devices out of warranty. Then one needs to take into consideration that there are many ways to break a device by being "sloppy" but not fall outside warranty constrains. I try to be careful with the devices I own and in the first case I would have to pay for the carelessness of other people and I don't like that. On the other side high repair cost can be a large burden to single individuals, which is when it is reasonable to share risks in the community (see, e.g., medical costs). This is why I guess the European law is basically about getting a working device in the first place and not about how repair costs are being distributed, which is non-obvious to decide.
- xyzzyz 15y agoIt's not 14 months, but in Poland, if it happens before 6 months, it is considered to be a defect that existed during sale.