25 year warranty – thoughts invited

When I bought my JBL L-65 (Jubal ) speakers in the late 70s, JBL at that time had a lifetime warranty. They changed it few years later to 5 years. Luckily for me, I kept the documentation I received with the speakers.

I needed to have them repaired and the repair facility tried to tell me that they were no longer "in warranty". I replied, "Au contraire, mon frere, *my* speakers will never go out of warranty..." And then I showed them the documents - they (grudgingly) fixed the speakers under warranty...

-RW- Keep yer documents!!

"Hmm. Curiously un-positive responses so far."

I've seen many times where well respected audio brands fix problems that were defective long after the warranty has expired. In each case, though, the problem was clearly a defect and not something the user did. It does make sense. No company wants to see people having problems with their gear.

11-12-13: Bigaitch
Hmm. Curiously un-positive responses so far. The warranty being offered cost the end-user nothing.

Obviously, this is not true. You must have no accounting/business background. There is no free lunch in the real world. The warranty does have a cost, and it is passed on to the consumer. All manufacturing costs are passed on to the consumer, and that includes repair costs. So it's like you paid an extra surcharge on the unit's purchase price for insurance purposes. Look at this warranty as a communist proposition. You are paying the costs for repair work being performed on others gear, so that in the event that someday your unit needs serviced, it will be done for no charge.

Maybe the fact that my 18 windows lifetime warranty had no value, since the company that I purchased the windows from went out of business has something to do with my faith in long term warranties. I just had to replace 10 new windows, since 10 of the 18 went bad, and the warranty no longer has any value. FWIW, my 10 new windows also have lifetime warranties. That's the kiss of death for that company. LOL!! ;)

Thor Audio offered a lifetime warranty. Unfortunately the buyers did not know that it was for the lifetime of the company, which was blissfully short. Caveat emptor.

One other thought on warranties. Lots of the gear being bought and sold on this site operate at the "bleeding edge" and thus may be considered, like many high performance items, more prone to failure. Not all, of course, but high performance usually comes at a price; durability, cost, ease of use, availability of replacement parts, etc. For example, the 2004 Honda F1 motor reved to 18,500+ RPM; my 2004 Honda Pilot motor is red-lined at around 5500 RPM. But my Pilot's motor just passed 180K miles and has never had anything beyond routine maintenance (oil changes, 1 serpentine belt/water pump, and one tune-up). I bet Honda never got 1K miles on one of their F1 motors.