hardware warranty

[fatb0y]

how do you guys manage the warranty. we are dealing on service and if customers require any hardware we will buy it for them and mark up a little bit. im wondering how would the warranty be managed ? as some warranty will live for few years, does this mean we have to keep the receipt for them and manage it ? as we do not keep stocks. would appreciate the advice or experience sharing....happy new year

 

[AlaDes]

My hardware warranty

I personally warranty most of my hardware for at least a year. Usually, I get a three year warranty, so it gives me a large cushion in the event a customer comes in a month after the repair is done or brings it back for repair a month after their warranty expires, or the part sits on the shelf for a few months. I've only had to warranty one hard drive in the year I've been in business and that was pretty much a breeze because I have an account with Seagate, who warranties most of their drives for three years from the time I purchase them. As far as laptop screens go, those also carry a three year warranty from the date I purchase them and so far, I've never had a warranty claim yet.
One of the biggest complaints I hear from customers is that "my computer crashed a day after the warranty expired and they won't honor it, so I'll never buy another computer from them", so I figure this is one of the few ways I can compete with good 'ol Wally World lol. I usually won't purchase anything with less than a three year warranty, unless I have to, because I know how ridiculous some people are about warranties. They expect you to warranty it, even if the warranty expired a week ago and I would rather not argue with them. A one year warrant gives me a lot of room to work with the customer in the event something like that happens.
If a customer requests used parts because of price issues (usually with laptop screens or motherboards), I let them know up front I can't guarantee or warranty the parts or my labor. Most of the time they will just go ahead with a new part because of the uncertainty.
Motherboard repairs (usually laptop chipset problems) that I have to send out for repair only carry a six month warranty on parts and labor because that is all I get from the repair facility. So far, I have had no issues here either.
Some things I pay particular attention to is the reputation of the whole-seller, the manufacturer, and the quality of work an outsourced repair shop does, when considering how long I will warranty an item for.

 

[Tony_Scarpelli]

how do you guys manage the warranty. we are dealing on service and if customers require any hardware we will buy it for them and mark up a little bit. im wondering how would the warranty be managed ? as some warranty will live for few years, does this mean we have to keep the receipt for them and manage it ? as we do not keep stocks. would appreciate the advice or experience sharing....happy new year

Much IT inventory comes with 3 year warranty. Hard drives, retail CPu's, some motherboards and lifetime warranty on some memory. So you can offer that as your terms as well however you do need a couple of things to make this not get out of control.

First you can decide to swallow the losses and then you do not need to worry about management of the paperwork but you have to charge more cost up front to cover that.

Second you can setup a database / marking system to put a label on every piece of equipment you buy, every component on a custom computer. The label should say date, vendor purchased from and invoice number. Then you need a fool proof file system to keep every vendor invoice. As you will be required to send a copy of the invoice to the vendor for an RMA (return merchandise authorization). You will need to charge enough profit to afford the additional time and management of this system.

For these reasons I never sell hardware to my customers for less than a 100% markup or a 50% profit margin. Most of my accessories I make a 400-800% markup.

If you sell products for a minimal markup you are creating a huge liability for yourself.

 

[nesrinamb]

1 year warranty on all hardware except used stuff (30 days) after one year they need to go to the manufacturer and talk to them.

I try to keep really good records on all stuff I sell and I have the receipt placed with vtiger

 

[Cornerstone Technologies]

OEM computers such as Dells or Lenovos get the manufacturers warranty when I resell them. Generally, my cheapest customers prefer these. In the sales agreement they sign, they acknowledge that they are at the mercy of those OEMS for the speed of any warranty claims. I explain this about 20 times in the course of any sale, just to be sure I made myself clear.

Custom builds, which I have been doing quite a lot of recently, get a standard 1 year limited warranty. What is covered is the processor, memory, and hard drives. I specifically exclude power supplies unless they bought a UPC, as well as opticals, mice and keyboards. Sometimes, I get a customer that is on the fence between an OEM or a custom build. Depending on margin, I will throw in a second year limited warranty. With those, I have included an additional hard drive in the machine to have on hand.

What I have had to do recently is go over all my estimates very closely as a non-profit has scoured them and purposely scammed freebies. Usually they are pertaining to software, which I have no intention of taking a loss on. I just insist that they secure all needed software prior to full deployment.

I also had to specifically exclude Operating System installs. This is a given, but some people will try to scam anything.

 

[fatb0y]

thanks for the reply.i guess i must keep n manage the warranty at least for a year.and yeah maybe reconsider on the margin that i am making ... thanks anyway

 

[djaburg]

As long as you're keeping some records of receipts you should be OK, since most hardware does carry a warranty. One thing I started doing was entering the HD serial numbers as I actually caught a customer trying to get a hard drive replaced that was under warranty, however, when I looked at the drive it was a different one. Pretty sneaky, but I didn't go off or anything. As simple call to the client explaining that the drive wasn't the one purchased with his computer as verified by the model/serial of the drive. Amazingly he started with "um, uh, maybe my son did something to it, I'll have to talk to him and I'll call you back". End result was he purchased a new drive.

Moral of the story, keep some basic records, ya just never know.

 

[joydivision]

One year for me, if the product has a longer warranty and if fails after a year I will inform the customer of that, and its up to them if they want to either RMA it or just pay for a new part. Either way after a year they will be paying labour again.

 

[sedigital]

Anything bought from us is covered at no charge for 1 year. After the first year we'll still cover it as long as it still has manufacturer warranty, but customer is responsible for shipping plus a $30 processing fee.

If a customer did not buy something from us then we will cover the warranty, customer is responsible for all shipping costs plus a $30 admin fee, sometimes diagnostic fee of $30 if it's an intermittent problem or something complex to diagnose. In these cases we do get a bit of a break on shipping, we charge the customer regular price on the shipping and usually make a couple extra dollars on the shipping as well. I see no problem with this because we are doing them a favour by warranting their Best Buy, Staples, etc., garbage.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

The only warranty we deal with is the manufacturers warranty. Such as a 3 year warranty on the HP Business Desktop, Dell Optiplex 790, or HP ProCurve network switch.

The warranty is tracked by the manufacturer using the serial number (or service tag in Dells case)...so we don't feel the need to keep additional paperwork or spend our own time trying to track that.

We liason between the customer and the manufacturer...that's what our customers pay us to do. If they don't want to pay us..they can deal with the manufacturer.