Path-Breaking Document On Warranty

DQ Channels India was the first reseller magazine to take up the cudgels on

behalf of the channel community with the vendors on warranty issues. This

initiative resulted in the first-ever panel discussions on warranty organized in

collaboration with Traders’ Association of Information Technology (TAIT) in

Mumbai, which brought vendors and partners together on a single platform to

discuss warranty in all its dimensions.

The intensity of participation at these panel discussions was amazing. If

resellers remained at the receiving end from end-users for warranty, vendors had

to bear the brunt of reseller complaints during panel discussions which provided

insights to vendors as to where they were lacking in implementing their warranty

policies.

The panel discussions led to the DQCI Ready Reckoner on Warranty Policies,

which was published in our Silver Club special issue in September 2002. This

again was a ‘first’ with no other publication venturing out to list the

salient warranty features of 10 leading vendors in the country. The idea was to

make warranty policies of the leading vendors transparent to the channel

community which had come up with the feedback that vendors did not put down

their policies in black and white.

And now, in this issue we bring you the document, ‘Warranty Guidlines/Terms’

as enunciated by the Suburban Computer Association of Latent Entities (SCALE),

Mumbai. This is a simple yet significant document which has the potential to

break new grounds in warranty in the country.

SCALE wants this document to be adopted and endorsed by every IT dealer and

their associations in the country and respected by every vendor in letter and

spirit. Will this happen? Well, it’s a moot question. Nevertheless, the

initiative taken by SCALE is in the right direction because issues related to

warranty are the most critical ones that can make or break channel business.

We have reproduced the document verbatim to ensure that every trade

association and its members across the country are in a position to disseminate

the contents and adopt the document as a guideline on warranty at the ‘intra-industry’

level. We throw open our columns for a thorough debate on the document from all

links in the channel chain.

This is one part of the story. The other part is that unless the vendors too

respect and endorse this very document in their warranty policies, all efforts

by dealers to become transparent in their dealings on warranty will come to a

naught.

Needless to say, vendors have everything to gain if they endorse the document

because the guidelines listed here will make their life easy too. Dealers will

not be in a position to make far-fetched claims on warranty because the document

will act as the Lakshman Rekha!

DQ Channels India will continue to act as a communication bridge between

vendors and partners, and partners among themselves to ensure that the channel

business keeps prospering with transparent warranty policies being implemented

at all levels.