saenz@adobe.com (Rick Saenz) (10/05/89)
My father-in-law ordered a Compaq system from a mail-order house; he tells me that all the equipment was in its original packing and included warranty cards. Soon after receiving it his hard disk went south, so he got in touch with Compaq, who refused to do anything about it because he hadn't bought the system through an authorized dealer. He made such a stink (something he is pretty good at) that finally they agreed to swap it for a new drive. His questions are (a) is it true that Compaq will only honor the warranty if a system was purchased through an authorized dealer, and (b) if so, is this a fairly well-known fact? Essentially, he wants to know whether Compaq is screwing the public, or whether he was simply not as informed as the average buyer. Thanks for any light you can shed on this. ---------- Rick Saenz Adobe Systems, Inc 1585 Charleston Rd. P.O. Box 7900 Mountain View, CA 94039-7900 (415) 961-4400 Internet: saenz@adobe.com uucp: ...!decwrl!adobe!saenz Rick Saenz Adobe Systems, Inc 1585 Charleston Rd. P.O. Box 7900 Mountain View, CA 94039-7900 (415) 961-4400 Internet: saenz@adobe.com uucp: ...!decwrl!adobe!saenz
davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) (10/05/89)
Having been through this a few years ago, here are two things for which you can look. Does the Warrantee card say anything about an authorized dealer? If so you lose. Does it say "original purchaser?" You lose again, the first owner who is not an authorized dealer is the o.p. However, if the organization from whom you bought the Compaq didn't handle the warrantee itself you might seem to have made a bad choice of suppliers. Most of these places will give you a year warrantee (or N months) and I suspect that they return the defective goods to an authorized dealer for credit. My opinion? You were lucky to get this covered. -- bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen) "The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called 'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see that the world is flat!" - anon
las) (10/06/89)
In article <1265@adobe.UUCP> saenz@adobe.com (Rick Saenz) writes: >My father-in-law ordered a Compaq system from a mail-order house... [His hard disk failed, Compaq did not wish to honor the warranty] Sounds like your father may have bought a "gray market" machine. Many manufactures sell their product only to "authorized dealers" at a contract price with discounts based on volume purchase, phase-of-the-moon, and who-knows-what-else. The authorized dealer concept is supposed to protect the self-same authorized dealers and the manufacturer from the consequences of "less reputable dealers" who would sell the machines with no intention of offering customer or warranty support, thus increasing their margin (profit on each sale) by avoiding the associated costs for these services. It also protects prices, and hence profits for dealers and manufacturers - and not necessarily to the general public's advantage, especially in regard to the fact that authorized dealer contracts may provide for limiting or prohibiting the dealer's option to discount the price. A dealer who does not offer customer and warranty support offloads the overhead for those services on other dealers who do offer them and the manufacturer if it offers services to the end user. Thus an argument can be made for requiring sales only by authorized dealers who provide complete services. However, the price protection aspect tends to reduce competition in the market place and I don't know of anyone who would say how wonderful they think that is. Of course those machines came from somewhere. Very likely an authorized dealer is bending - if not breaking - his/her contract with the manufac- turer by reselling some of the machines directly into the gray market. This is one way for authorized dealers to increase their own margins: buy a larger quantity than you can sell through your own dealership and then resell the excess machines into the gray market, which presumably sells the machines to people who wouldn't come to your store to buy them anyway. The manufacturer probably sets a discount schedule based on volume and so buying the larger a quantity gets you a more favorable per-machine discount. When you recover the costs of buying machines you wouldn't have been able to move from your dealership buy selling them to the gray market, you've ended up paying less per machine in your sales inventory and increased your margin since you aren't necessarily marking down your prices to your customers - something you may not be allowed to do in your authorized dealer contract anyway. Of course, selling to the gray market is probably not allowed in the contract either, but they have to catch you first, right? regards, Larry -- Signed: Larry A. Shurr (cbema!las@att.ATT.COM or att!cbema!las) Clever signature, Wonderful wit, Outdo the others, Be a big hit! - Burma Shave (With apologies to the real thing. The above represents my views only.) (Please note my mailing address. Mail sent directly to cbnews doesn't make it.)