A Manufacturer that pays return shipping

OP, Don't know of any.

OP-inion, If there are any, they will have that built into their price structure. That seems counter-intuitive.

Against the competition, I would want to offer the best I could make for the least amount of profit that I need so it would make the business worthwhile.

I also see it as analogous to the "extended warranty" offered on many other products. You can tack that on to the price of the product if it makes you feel better but in the vast majority of the cases you will lose $ with it. In a few cases you win. At least, in the EW case, you have the option of paying more but think it would be financial suicide to add it automaticly to the msrp.

Atmasphere, There are many companies who also charge for return shipping for items under warranty. Meaning from the Manufacturer's facility back to me. Your caught by the short hairs at this time.

Profit? I think I'd characterize it as survival.

I don't see many audio manufacturers with personal jets and sailing in yachts. Back when these guys bent over backwards, I suspect revenue and profits were much better.

If a manufacturer is going to live on small profits and low volume, then in order to cover the cost of future warranty shipping, you'd have to amortize that across all sales. Which means you need to charge more money per unit.

But with small volume, it's hard to have a good predictive model on what fully burdened warranty costs will be. And without regional representation, covering the cost of shipping regardless of where the customer lives, that's a tough proposition too.

LG has an advantage here. They're huge, they have regional support, they sell in large volume.

In a world where travelers will choose one airline over another because a ticket is 5 dollars more expensive, I imagine that manufacturers increasingly need to compete on price at the front end rather than sell on the promise of future customer service experience.

Atmaspere got it right. Manufacturers can't control where their customers live and to cover shipping costs they'd have to plan on worst case scenario (cross country or worse) and then build that into their prices. I used to sell kitchen sinks and the mfr would warranty the sink in the event of a defect but would not cover removal/reinstallation costs because some sinks were sandwiched under megabuck granite countertops and the like. Like hifi shipping costs they couldn't afford to accomodate the extremes.

Just wanted to thank everyone that responded to this thread I guess I got my answer, I wasn't really asking it could or couldn't be done I know I'm not going to change anybody's opinion anymore than they can change mine which is if they believed in the quality of their product they wouldn't expect many warranty returns if any anyway thanks again