Ok. So I just talked to Sights and Sounds... and guess what? They tell me that since my unit is already 6 months and 5 days old, they said I have to pay for the part since the unit has only 6 MONTHS WARRANTY ON PARTS and 12 MONTHS ON LABOR.
What the! When I was buying the unit, all they said was it had a 1 YEAR WARRANTY!
Seems the fine print, if there is one, becomes clearer when you start to invoke the claim. Warranties are not exactly a major point in our buying decisions. I'm also a victim of that. Now I know better. We should research and ask more questions, like:
Does the authorized dealer stock spare parts inventories?
How much is the typical or standard minimum labor cost when the unit is repared outside of warranty?
How many units of this model are currently being repaired under warranty? Or what is the mean time between failure?
How many technicians support the authorized dealers?
Where is the authorized service center?
How stable is the service center and authorized dealer?
What is the experience of customers with the dealer and service center?
These are questions I doubt if a dealer can answer. But these are similar to the questions I ask computer hadrware vendors/ providers like IBM and HP when they make a proposal for servers in my previous company. After-sales service is always a major part of any hardware acqusition evaluation in many companies. Maybe we should learn from that.
So I asked for the number of Studio Systems... the importer of NAD. I'm hoping that I can get more service there. So I called them up, and when I told them my predicament, they told me that they can't honor the WARRANTY because of MISUSE.
So I asked what MISUSE? They told me that I made heavy use of CD-R on the player. WHAT!? Yes, I do play CD-R's but only backups of the originals that I have. They even told me that it was because these International companies wanted to shun piracy. I didn't even ask how they came out with the conclusion that CD-Rs destroyed my almost new unit. Did it have a counter inside?
I told them I didn't have pirated CDs! And now they say maybe I used inferior CD-Rs which I buy from CD-R King. Well, I do use Benq CD-Rs from CD-R King but as I have said, I only have a few CD-R backups and I mostly use it for my car.
Hmm, that word ABUSE sounds so familiar.
Don't let it get to you. It's their way of escaping the warranty responsibility. If you read those warranties. you'd come across statements like "except acts of God, war, misuse, abuse.... Except wars and natural calamities, abuse or misuse is debatable and can only be established by assumption. In the case of dealers, presumption. Unless you can prove otherwise. (But how? HOw do dealers disinguish between material failure and misuse?) Like I said, when in doubt, they resolve in favor of thier business, not the customer.
And don't let them fool you with their excuses that CD-Rs or pirated discs ruined your machine. That's total BS. Digital players really have no prejudices with what you put in them. The worst a defective disc can do is ruin your laser pick-up, which often happens with warped discs. Defective encoding will simply make the disc unplayable. Electronic circuits have no patience with such discs and will simply ignore and not play them. But I heard it's an audio circuit that got busted not the laser assembly. So it is obvous they don't know what they're tallking about. I would not want to trust my gears in the hands of such nitwits.
In this hobby, at least in this country, dealers apparently do not like to recognize "material failure" or lemons. ABUSE is so easy to invoke in their favour. The burden of proof suddenly is on your table. When it should not.
I will have to wait 4 weeks for a PART that they were not even sure if it is ON STOCK, and when that PART comes, then I will have to pay P5,000 for it.
The silver-lining? Well, Redkoji said that if they can get the part lower than the price they are expecting, then they will give me a discount on it. Since I bought my 2 cd players and B&W speakers from Sights and Sounds, they said they will give me a brand new unit, and I will just have to pay them the P5,000. Gee... thanks!
If they are willing to give you a brand new unit after paying P5,000, why not just do so NOW? Give them your defective unit, pay them the 5T and get the brand new unit they offered. Enjoy the unit despite the exprience and forget about them. Magbabayad din lang ako ng 5T, I'd prefer to get a brand new unit than wait for the repaired unit.
Just my thoughts.
