Do your guarantees match your advertising and rhetoric?

At our company we teach quite a lot of classes and that means we do a lot of printing. So, we decided to move up to a really serious printer. Whenever we go to a high-end print shop, they all use Fuji Xerox Docucenter printers. So we thought we should get one.

These are truly amazing printers/copiers. The print quality is the best available. The print speed is awesome (and just based on your budget). The capabilties are exactly what we need. The printers are renowned for their reliability and the price of the printers reflects their high-end status.

However, given a company claims to have the best product available, charges a price that matches those claims and also says that it almost never breaks down, how long would you imagine they would warrant it for? 12 months? 24 months? 36 months? 5 years?

I was a little stunned to see that they cover only the cost of parts for 3 months. Yes, that’s no misprint. It’s 3 months.

I am assured this is “normal” for this segment of the industry. Am I alone in finding this more than a little odd? A small car manufacturer would warrant their similarly-priced product for 3 or 5 years today.

I understand that most people buy these with some sort of ongoing service agreement but is there any other industry where you sell items that cost as much as a car and only warrant it for 3 months? What message does that really send about the manufacturer’s confidence in their own product?

2011-04-05