Thread: Warranties - good stories?

The hobby shop I work at had some model trains made in Japan in the 70s. One batch had a problem where the diecast wheel centres become brittle and disintegrate over time.
The Japanese company that made the models doesn't exist anymore, but the old fellow who owned the company still replaces the wheels under warranty some 35 years after production.

My best was an engine replacement at 147k on a Holden Rodeo. The bloke was a contractor and had receipts for every service (at whichever Holden dealer was convenient to where he was working). There wasn't much to and fro before the OK was given.

This isn't a warranty story as such, but in the same line of customer service. I had 'Lost' (Don't ask where I eventually found it) my Barrett 2050 HF remote head unit, and rung Barrett to price a replacement. The tech was very helpful, even offered to make me one up out of used/returned parts for very little if I didn't want to buy a new one (Actually a new one was quite cheap!) so there is a plug for Barrett Communications in WA

JC

Apart from wasting money on landrovers I've always been a bit of an audiophile and have upgraded my system over the years whenever I could afford to.
So just before emigrating I splashed out $12k on my dream cd player Frank (the dealer) said he would pack all my equipment for shipping, including the new cd player as it's all part of their service.
A couple of months later when I retrieved my hi fi out of storage, I was horrified to find they had packed the wrong cd player I rang Frank and to cut a long story short, he was going to New Zealand for holidays and said he would fly from New Zealand to Australia and bring my cd player over personally.
This he did and he and his family spent a couple of days with us, enjoying themselves at all the tourist spots.

Probably three years later my cd player started acting strangely towards some dvd's and wouldn't read all the detail I rang Frank again who put me in touch with Kevin. Now Kevin is the guy who was sent to Australia purely to keep the customers happy. He asked me to send it to him in Sydney and he would carry out any repairs under warranty. This he did, but after a month or so it started doing it again
This time I rang Kevin direct and told him the good news, his reply " I'll see you in two days and I'll bring new parts to replace the faulty one"

So true to his word, Kevin flew up from Sydney to Brisbane, hired a car, drove to our house, fitted a new laser and some sneaky upgrades to my machine to bring it up to current spec. He then spent three hours tuning my system to the room. All this was done free of charge and under warranty

Kevin you're a star

Linn : Just Listen

In the early 90s I had bought an low kilometer ex-council VN Berlina at the auctions (it had abt 30,000 km on it. A couple of years later - well outside the warranty period and at about 100,000 km it broke a camshaft (as they were known to do - and the reason why it happened is a manufacturing fault that is well known).

Even though I had not used them for services the local Holden dealer included it in their engine replacement program on the basis that GMH would supply a new short motor if I paid a proportion of the installation labour (which I seem to remember wasn't all that expensive).

To me that is good service from the manufacturer (pity they never had a go at building LRs)