"it's really not the mfr's responsibility to"
No, their
legal responsibility stops with the warranty terms. But the smart ones, the ones who want to be in business in fifty years or a hundred and fifty, support their customers and their products. That buys priceless loyalty to the brand, and in fact it is often cheaper to take a loss on a problem, than it is to replace a customer.
So in simple dollars and sense....You can ignore the customer and churn away millions of them every month until you've killed your brand. As AOL did.
Or you can do as LLBean does. They've actually been interviewed and gone on
record as saying their warranty policy is cheaper than advertising to get new customers, and put up dollar figures for both. It may cost them $200-300 (?) in advertising monies spent, to gain one new customer. that one customer has a
buying lifetime of perhaps sixty years (ages 20-80) ignoring any referrals they generate. So if they eat some unreasonable warranty claim and spend $100 that they weren't obligated to spend? They've also saved $200 in advertising to replace the customer,
and, retained the customer's business for perhaps another 30-40 years. The customer isn't always right, there are always limits, but for a company or it's reps to say "Gee, you broke a two dollar part, how about spending two grand to replace...." is just
really a callous insult to the customer.
Especially when you could say something like "Gee, that's unfortunate...here's how we can fix it, and we'll do it at cost for you." THAT could generate a very different response and very different publicity, and that's what makes or breaks profits.
Really, a switch? And they couldn't even say "Oh, that's a Switchco #2500, you could try contacting them at..."
Any third world
radio ship can take fixee. Fiedollah.
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