Do you really need to 'activate' product manufacturer's warranties?

Wednesday, 29 January 2020

The Consumer Guarantees Act requires goods and services to be fit for purpose, durable and free from defects.

OPINION: My 'poppycock' radar pings into life every time a retailer mentions the word 'warranty'.

It emitted an especially loud ping last week when I bought a new push scooter as the one I owned was on its last legs from overuse on Auckland's madly uneven pavements.

The welcome pack that came with the scooter advised me to 'activate' the manufacturer's 'free' warranty by registering online.

Vanity be damned: Rob Stock, business journalist for Stuff, trundles cheerfully along on his manually powered Micro scooter. While it looks like he's travelling at speed, the reality is it's only around double walking pace, shortening journey times to near locations.

Two facts of life: 1. the idea of a 'manufacturer's warranty' is, as far as I can tell, a complete fiction, and 2. your rights under the Consumer Guarantees Act do not need activating.

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Push scooters (as opposed to the lazy and expensive option of electric scooters) play a big part in getting me around my city.

I make most journeys by bike, but the scooter and our one family car are neck in neck in second place in terms of number of trips I make using them.

For short journeys (walking child to school or guides, nipping to the local shops, getting from a bus stop to my actual destination, etc) a scooter has proven surprisingly pleasant to own, especially as they are now made by some really high-end manufacturers.

'Activating' your manufacturer's warranty on a product you have bought is basically nonsense.

Mine, and my two daughters' scooters, are made by the Swiss company Micro.

Micro-mobility is a term that covers the use of small forms of personal vehicles like e-scooters and push-scooters. It is an increasingly important part of Auckland's transport mix as more people live in city centre and fringe apartments.

But while Micro make good scooters, I wasn't impressed by the 'activation' demand, and as it was not the first time in the past year I had faced, and ignored, the requirement. Toolmakers, and appliance makers, seem to make this unreasonable demand too.

I decided to give the company a call.

To be fair, the company, which didn't know I was a business reporter, told me not to worry about 'activating', and not to bother. The chap on the other end of the phone said as long as I had my proof of purchase, if there was a fault within two years, the company would fix it.

I was both pleased, and irritated with the response. Pleased because the company decided to call itself on the bluff, and irritated because it maintained the pretence of their being such a thing as a manufacturer's warranty.

Look, the law is this: Under the Consumer Guarantees Act a product must be fit for their normal purposes, and durable.

Durable means different things for different products, and for a scooter, it certainly means at least two years of trouble-free urban scooting.

For the maker to describe this obligation as a 'manufacturer's warranty' is both claiming it's giving you something for 'free' that is merely its bare minimum legal obligation, and setting a supposed limit on the time its obligation lasts for.

Really, perhaps a scooter under the Consumer Guarantees Act really should be free form major faults under normal use for far longer than that.

Certainly I have seen retailers of appliances like fridges and freezers try to tell me they had two-year manufacturer's warranties.

If my fridge broke down two years and a week after I bought it, and the maker, or retailer, tried to fob me off, I'd be pointing out the facts of the Consumer Guarantees Act to them, and heading for the Disputes Tribunal to enforce it.

The concept of manufacturer's warranties is merely a bid by companies to limit their real legal obligations, which in turn enables shops to try to sell you over-priced 'extended warranties'.

GOLDEN RULES:

* Do not be gullible

* Trust only when you have verified

* Know your rights