It’s Not Covered!
People often assume that absolutely everything is covered by a warranty. It isn’t.
How often have we heard that said or something similar from a customer, normally in disbelief?
Too often, and the sad thing is that the vast majority of people do not understand that the manufacturer’s warranty, or indeed any warranty, does not cover the costs to repair faulty plumbing or a door that a child jumped on and broke; these are not valid warranty claims!
It’s strange that people more often than not refuse to pay service technicians for doing legitimate work in their home to rectify the problem with the appliance that had nothing to do with the actual machine.
Often the repairers feel that they seem to be held responsible for all manner of things, like coins in the machine, nails in it, faulty plumbing, you name it or at they are expected to foot the bill to repair it! As, the manufacturer won’t pay them to remedy problems that aren’t covered.
To shed a different light on this kind of situation, if you ran your car into the garage door you wouldn’t expect the car manufacturer to pick up the repair tab for that, would you? Or because a nail punctures a tyre it’s hardly the fault of the car manufacturer or, indeed, the tyre manufacturer is it? It’s the same situation with appliances; the manufacturer or insurer is only responsible for electrical and mechanical faults with the appliance and not anything external to the appliance.
What really irks repairers in these situations is that it is left to us to try to explain the warranty terms to the customer and to get payment from them, when 99.99% of customers do not realise that we do not get paid for these calls at all by whatever manufacturer, insurer or work provider.
People also do not realise that it’s not through any malice that we want to charge them for the call, most repairers would far rather charge the people who issued the warranty rather than the customer themselves, but alas, it’s not that easy.
Then you get the attitude of, “oh well, you’re a company and you just have to accept the losses”, so if the same customer goes to work and the company they work for can’t pay them for the day, they just to accept the losses too, then? It is the same thing!
You can perhaps understand better how the repairers get annoyed by this.
And of late some insurance companies and manufacturers have clamped right down on such things, with some now not paying for even fascia replacements as it’s cosmetic and not a functional spare!
It is our opinion that this is a direct reflection on the state of the industry in general, the appliances are so cheap and margins so tight that they simply cannot suffer the costs of these calls. Yet the poor customer is unaware of this when placing the call and generally unaware of the terms of the warranty.
The list of things that follow are what many manufacturers and insurers will not pay for, some may pay for the call, and some may not, it’s potluck really.
- No fault found (most insurers and many manufacturers)
- Plumbing faults (virtually all)
- Blockages due to foreign objects
- Damage due to foreign objects
- Consequential loss (laundry bills, flooring, eating out etc)
- Installation faults
- Malicious damage
- Cosmetic damage
- Customer misuse
- Educational visits
- Repeat visits
As you can see in a lot of cases a lot of things are not covered by your warranty, but then would you expect a car manufacturer to pay to have your garage door opened so you could get your car out of it?