Blame It On Warranty

The Garden City’s channel is faced with warranty issues which are unsettling as ever. While resellers accuse principals of ambiguity in their channel policies, the latter blame it on high customer expectations. AIT, the angalore-based channel organization, took up the issue with vendors, but the outcome is far from satisfactory.

Warranty has become ahot issue with customers becomming more and more aware

of their rights and privileges once they buy a product. Be it a comprehensive or

a limited warranty. Today customers demand what is due to them and it is always

the partenrs who are at the receiving end.

Keeping the warranty promise to customers is a major challenge channels are

facing today. "Warranty issue is definitely a multifarious one and

resellers feel that vendors across the country are ambiguous about the policies

related to their products," points out C Dhananjay, MD, Computer Factory

and Honorary Secretary, Association of Information Technology (AIT), a Bangalore-based

channel association.

AIT’S EFFORT



For the past one year, AIT has been taking up the issue of warranty with

vendors on a regular basis. With the primary objective to get well-defined

warranty policies from different vendors, AIT has been active in pointing out

the different issues 

"The major problem today is delay in service. Sometimes the turnaround time stretches up to as many as 30 days"

Sandeep Sodhani, Branch Manager, Supertron Electronics

raised by channel partners in their newsletters. The

association also regularly publishes guidelines in its circulars and trade

publications on how its members should implement warranty policies.

AIT has organized seminars to bring principals, their distributors and

resellers on a common platform to discuss warranty issues. Says Dhananjay,

"We want vendors as well as our own AIT members to define their warranty

policies. This will help in clearing many gray areas emerging out of warranty

policies." Unfortunately, the response to AIT’s initiative has been

lukewarm so far.

HIGH CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS



Sunil Sharma, MD, Kobian India points out that some issues that are related

to warranty are self-created by channels. He says, "It would be wrong to

blame vendors for all the issues pertaining to warranty. Often the channel faces

problems because of wrong and high expectations of customers."

He mentions instances where customers insist on replacement of a damaged

product, which they bought six months earlier.

"There are customers who demand replacement even though the problem can

be rectified with a minor repair," he adds.

According to him, channels approach vendors for replacement and are turned

down as these are not covered under the warranty policies.

INCREASING TURNAROUND CYCLE



Increasing turnaround cycle is one major problem that channel partners face

while providing support. Says a reseller who wished to remain anonymous,

"The turnaround time has increased to about 30 days and sometimes it even

goes up to 60 days, that is approximately 17 percent of the usual one-year

warranty period. How long can we keep on promising customers, that they will get

the machine repaired ‘shortly’?" he asks.

“It would be wrong to blame vendors for all warranty-related issues. Often the channel faces problems because of high customer expectations”

Sunil Sharma,  MD, Kobian India

On a similar note, Sandeep Sodhani, Branch Manager, Supertron Electronics

laments that typically the turnaround time ranges anything between two days to

20 days depending upon the complexity of the problem. "The major problem

today is the delay in service, which results in customers getting dissatisfied.

Sometimes the turnaround time increases to as long as 30 days," he says.

It is evident that an increase in the service turnaround time is not always

due to the delay in addressing a particular complaint.

The reason for this could also be the delay in transporting the defective

product from a reseller to distributor and then back to the vendor. Typically,

when a customer takes a defective product to the reseller he receives it and

attends to it two days later.

The reseller decides to courier the product to the distributor/vendor if the

complaint is complicated. Sometimes, there would be a delay in transporting the

product to the distributor/vendor, which adds on to the turnaround cycle zof the

complaint.

There could also be a possibility where a reseller sends the product by

courier several days later. And since it is difficult to track the status of the

courier at different points, vendors may receive the defective product late.

SOLUTIONS VENDORS OFFER



To reduce the turnaround time, Kobian India has introduced a web

based-software. "Currently all our authorized distributors are connected to

this system via the Internet," informs Sunil. This software monitors

service transactions from the time a distributor logs in a request for repair to

the time Kobian ships the product back to them.

“Resellers feel that vendors are ambiguous about warranty policies related to their products”

C Dhananjay,  Honorary Secretary, AIT

To solve the service delay problem, Epson India has introduced a new warranty

initiative. Under this initiative, the company has launched ‘Epson Express’

wherein if an Epson customer finds a fault in a select range of Epson printers

within 30 days of purchase, the company promises to replace the defective

product with a brand new one instantly.

The offer is currently applicable to the lower-end inkjets, dot matrix and

laser printers and is available to Epson customers in New Delhi and will be

rolled out in Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Cochin, and Hyderabad by October-end.

To ensure availability and a swift resolution of customer grievances, the

company has set up Epson Express centers in these cities that will operate from

9:00 am to 6:30 pm from Monday to Saturday. The company assures that customers

will be attended to within five minutes of their arrival and their problems will

be solved within 30 minutes.

PASSING THE BUCK



But overall, the name of the warranty game is passing the buck. There are

resellers who blame distributors who in turn blame vendors.

Associations like AIT are doing their bit for hapless resellers to help them

voice their woes. And while they are doing that, one can only hope that more and

more vendors take initiatives to come out with clear policies and go that extra

mile to fulfill their promises and ensure partners and customer satisfaction.

SUNILA PAUL in Bangalore