What Isn't Covered By Your Appliance Warranty

How often have we heard that or something similar from a customer? Too often and the sad thing is that the vast majority of customers simply do not understand that the manufacturer warranty, or indeed any warranty, does not cover the costs to repair faulty plumbing or a door that a child jumped on. breaking it, these are simply not valid warranty claims!

It's strange this is, customers more often than not refuse to pay us for doing legitimate work in their home to rectify the problem with the appliance that had nothing to do with the actual machine. We seem to be held responsible for all manners of things, like coins in the machine, nails in it, faulty plumbing, you name it or at least we are expected to foot the bill to repair it!

To shed a different light on this kind of situation, if you ran your car into the garage door you wouldn't expect the car manufacturer to pick up the repair tab for that would you? Or because a nail punctures a tyre it's hardly the fault of the car manufacturer or, indeed, the tyre manufacturer is it? It's the same situation with appliances, the manufacturer or insurer is only responsible for electrical and mechanicl faults with the appliance and not anything external to the appliance.

What really irks engineers in these situations is that it is left to us to try to explain the warranty terms to the customer and to get payment from them, when 99.99% of customers do not realise that we do not get paid for these calls at all by whatever manufacturer, insurer or work provider. The customers do not also realise that it's not through any malice that we want to charge them for the call, personally I'd far rather charge the people that issued the warranty rather than the customer themselves, but alas it's not that easy.

Then you get the attitude of, "oh well you're a company and you just have to accept the losses", so if the same customer goes to work and the company they work for can't pay them for the day they've just to accept the losses too then? I think not somehow and it is exactly the same thing!

And of late some insurance companies and manufacturers have clamped right down on such things, with some now not paying for even fascia replacements as it's cosmetic and not a functional spare! It is my opinion that this is a direct reflection on the state of the industry in general, the appliance are so cheap and margins so tight that they simply cannot suffer the costs of these calls. Yet the poor customer is unaware of this when placing the call and generally unware of the terms of the warranty.

The list of things that follow are what many manufacturers and insurers will not pay for, some may pay for the call and some may not, it's pot luck really.

• No fault found (most insurers and many manufacturers)
• Plumbing faults (virtually all)
• Blockages due to foreign objects
• Damage due to foreign objects
• Consequential loss (laundry bills, flooring, eating out etc)
• Installation faults
• Malicious damage
• Cosmetic damage
• Customer misuse
• Educational visits
• Repeat visits

As you can see in a lot of cases a lot of things are not covered by your warranty, but then would you expect a car manufacturer to pay to have your gargage door opened so you could get your car out of it? In many cases it is tantamount to the same thing and time costs money.