Discontent On Warranty Is Alarming

"I

did not know what hit me!" exclaimed Prasanto Kumar Roy, Chief Editor, DQCI, at the end of the panel discussion on "Warranty

Issues". Prasanto, who was the moderator, was only being metaphorical in

his expression because he knew exactly what had hit him!

In fact, every member of the panel knew what had hit them. It was the

alarming discontent among partners on warranty. The strong dissatisfaction on

warranty matters displayed at the discussion organized by DQCI in collaboration

with Trade Association of Information Technology (TAIT), Mumbai, gave a clear

signal to vendors: Ignore the discontent at your own peril!

Indeed! All vendors need to pull up their socks and ensure, first and

foremost, that partners are made aware of their warranty policies. The vendors

on the panel, including HP, Samsung, IBM, Kobian and Dax Networks, saw the clear

message coming across from partners that the latter were not at all aware of the

warranty policies followed by the former.

This would be true for every vendor in the country and not just the vendors

on the panel. Partners are looking up to DQCI to organize more events of this

kind to ensure continuous interaction on warranty between all major vendors and

partners. We would only be glad to act as the communication bridge between

vendors and partners.

Does this feedback from partners mean that vendors do not make concerted

efforts to make former aware of warranty policies? But to look at the same coin

from the other side, do partners make serious efforts to find out the finer

print of warranty policy of each vendor or do they take the easy way out and

blame vendors for their slackness?

Partners have no reason to take the easy way out because they are anyway at

the receiving end from their customers. Also, evidence suggests that after being

unsuccessful at their individual efforts of trying to make the vendors implement

their warranty policies, they tried to do the same through TAIT. Even here, they

were only partially successful because very few vendors responded to TAIT and

gave their warranty policies in writing.

So, clearly, the ball is in the vendors’ court. The highest disenchantment

partners have is on vendors’ DOA policies. Partners rightly say that they do

not want DOA products to be repaired and returned. They want brand new

replacements for DOA products.

The next biggest disappointment partners have is at the delays caused by

vendors for RMA products. Partners want vendors to define a time-frame and stick

to it religiously to keep their customers satisfied.

Finally, partners want vendors to put the warranty card in every box clearly

mentioning the terms and conditions of warranty and the contact details to claim

warranty.

These are no big demands really. It is in the interest of vendors to

implement these and deliver the "feel good" factor to partners on

warranty.

sylvesterl@cmil.com