Dealer loses money on warranty work?

[moog5]

I am confused about the "Gold Warranty by Harmon." I will first say that I own a Harmon XXV that I am for the most part happy with. I also understand that dealers must make money but also understand that a consumer should get what they pay for including the warranty. I just read multiple threads that seemed to be saying that the dealer is expected to do warranty work for less than their regular rate and that the profit from their stove sales should make up the difference. I am willing to accept the price for the stove if I am going to receive the warranty work. Having said this, is it now fair that the dealer also charge a service charge for "Gold Warranty" work even after receiving the profit from the sale of their stoves?
I don't believe that I am a cheap person as I have spent approximately $3000.00 for a stove. I just don't feel that it is fair to pay that for a stove and then have to pay for warranty work on top of it. Is this a common practice for the service charge on warranty work (same dealer purchased from)? If the price of the stove is partially justified by the expected warranty work then how do you justify the additional service charge for the warranty work? Is this not double dipping?
This is not intended to upset anyone just something to think about. If I have misunderstood the previous threads about the warranty work then I apologize in advance.

Your warranty is with "Harman Stoves", not your dealer. Assuming you operate and maintain the stove per the owners manual, you shouldn't have to pay a dime to have "Harman Stoves" or those acting on their behalf (your dealer) perform repairs covered by the warranty. Whatever contractual arrangements "Harman Stoves" has with their dealers was agreed to by the dealer and "Harman Stoves". If your dealer complains about losing money on having to perform the warranty repairs under cost reimbursement rates they agreed to with "Harman Stoves", then they either need to terminate their contractual arrangement with Harman, or regotiate their terms with Harman. I doubt the latter is a viable option, until the demand for Harman goes down.

If you believe your dealer is interpeting the weasle words in the Harman Warranty (i.e. "extra costs such as mileage and overtime are not covered"), then you have every right to complain about it in a public forum, and what better place than here.

With respect to my situation, my XXV, it is still running like a top, (buzzing never returned after being clamped).
My dealer has since gone out of business, but if I need to have warranty repair work done, I expect the "Harman Stoves" to ensure the next closest dealer performs repairs covered by the warranty free of cost to me.

Perhaps you can change the title of your orignal post to "Dealer loses money on warranty repair", to "Dealer profits less due to warranty repair"

 

[HarryBack]

at the risk of getting flamed...again... Ill try again to explain the other side of this coin, although I cringe at doing so, since I tend to become the sacrificial pinata (spelling?) as a dealer here.

There is no "contractual agreement" upon becoming a Harman dealer, as least there wasnt one when we became one. Basically, as youve seen, the only agreement is the warrantee which is provided, and Pete alluded to. Here it is, again:

(broken link removed)

As said earlier, there is no contractual agreement, so, there are no terms to renegotiate.

Now, as for "weasel words" in the warrantee such as mileage and overtime, your situation is really a good one. Your original, selling dealer is now out of business. Lets say youve an issue with your still warranteed unit. Who is going to fix it? Ill tell you Harman isnt coming out to do it. It'll end up being another dealer. Now, if the next closest dealer is say, 100 miles away, does it follow that the dealer, who didnt profit from your stove at all, lose money on the claim? The agreement YOU have with Harman is the warrantee. When YOU bought the unit, YOU also bought the warrantee. If you didnt ask for a copy, or didnt like the terms, that should have been addressed before the sale. There are many good dealers out there, but I doubt if they are going to happily agree to service a unit a great distance from them, which they didnt sell in the first place, and not get reimbursed. Again, the warrantee is what it is, you bought it with the stove, like it or not. In doing so, you agreed to the terms. The terms do state the dealer may get reimbursed for OT or mileage. If that is so objectionable, you possibly bought the wrong make of stove. As an aside, have you looked at the warrantees of any other units? Just curious.....

"dealer profits less due to warrantee repair"....hmm....why did your dealer go out of business, anyways?

 

[HarryBack]

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A reputable dealer should inform the customer of the potential charges.....before purchase of the stove. This may not apply when warranty figures are extremely low (like less than 3%), but with products that need more than that (and I think most pellet stoves do), a customer should be informed....especially if the store is using the warranty to close the deal.

Of course, the ultimate solution is better quality control on the stoves - AND, good troubleshooting resources so the customer and others can hopefully fix the simple problems.

There it is Craig, well said. The problems that CFM/Majestic has with their products, service, dealers, and QC are easily solved. That old model of the real Vermont Castings, Inc worked. It works with the Scandinavian firms and most domestic makers that base their corporate philosophy on giving value. Maybe some of those here should listen more, not blame the consumer....and certainly not fall in love with a brand without intelligence about their products, the company, the "service" .
The Hearth industry has to deal with low volume, high liability, dealer AND consumer support. No excuse for lack of good support and QC. Sounds like our software industry in the 80's.
It is why GM, Chrysler, Ford have lost global market share. Value. Quality. Service. Simple, but difficult to execute.

absolutely, Downeast......communication. People tend not to communicate well anymore....dealers, consumers, manufacturers. I fully support the consumer, the end-user, asking any and all questions, before buying a unit, to at least get an idea of whether the product suits them or not....maybe the warrantee is too restrictive, etc. Troubleshooting? There really are some pretty good resources for that, actually. The problem with service is that it isnt an issue until you need it. Thats where the proverbial rubber hits the road. The warrantee might look good, but is it backed up? I think the manufacturers and dealers need to do a better job communicating to the end user such things as maintenance, correct burning practices, etc. Maintenance is pretty key. Nothing worse than going out to a "broken" stove only to find its just very dirty.

 

[stoveguy2esw]

one of the things i do at work is look at stoves that have been returned to stores (mass merchants such as depot and lowes have their "no questions asked return policy" in the years i have been doing this ive seen a few units come back , with the mass merchant policy ive dealt with everything from " stove dont draw " to one in particular which a store demanded we allow a return of the unit for credit as it was returned (unused) because the customer didnt like the color (black) same as the displayed unit in the store. other than the silly ones like i mentioned we receive units back that had they been dogs i would have called the spca. no maintenance plugged with ash , gaskets torn up, melted pellet bags stuck to the stove, pellet stoves burnt up that arrive back with pea coal in them (of course the customer claimed they only used pellets) i went through a stove today that was returned due to an "auger problem" the unit had hazelnuts in the augers and smelled to high heaven they had been dropping whatever they felt like burning into the unit. now we end up having to credit the store back for the unit. and what scares me the most is the store likely gave them a brand new unit! who suffers from that ? the customer? no , he has his new unit to find other ways to abuse, the dealer? in our case the mass merchant store which gets its money back for the returned unit. no, the manufacturer eats it, yep we do, plus the shiping to bring the thing back and labor for me to determine what this was returned for. now we are in a different market than harmon and others (due to who we sell through) and the mileage and labor things are different with us, we sell through DIY and actually handle most warranty issues with the customer right over the phone, if a part is needed we ups it out usually the same day. in quite many (but not all) cases the customer is ok with that as they can get the unit running rapidly. ive had customers call me with a unit that was completely non-functional and had the unit up and running within minutes usually. but we have designed our stoves to fit that type of market.

all that to say this, i agree with harryback. in the case of a dealer who went out of buisness, another dealer, who has not made a dime on the sale of the unit, should not be obligated to service it free. sombody has to pay for his time and that time was paid for to a different dealer, warranties and cost of covering them are undoubtably factored into the cost of a unit to a customer. now im not saying they add the expected cost of a service call or two to the cost of every unit , but i'd be suprised if it wasnt figured out ahead what the expected cost of a certain percentage of calls would cost and the retail price would reflect a small amount earmarked for that purpose. look at it this way, the cost of doing buisness is not "i have a stove , you buy it and i pocket the money" the operating expenses of the store, salaries, maintaining stock of stoves and parts, all eat from the same plate. warranty issues would have to also, manufacturers may pay for the work, but they are limited funds, which may not be equal to what the market in a specific area call for. for example say MFG "X" pays $20.00 hour and 10 cents a mile, but the dealers repair guy gets 40 bucks and 20 cents a mile,(manufacturers will do this regardless of what they make simply to keep their costs reasonable, a "blank check" would be exploited sooner or later by sombody who would obviously hit the manufacturer with an exorbitant bill or bills dont think this doesnt happen, ive seen it) the dealer must either convince his repair guy to take what the brand x company pays him, or simply eat the rest. now, looking back at the example of the non-selling dealer, he would not be compensated by the manufacturer , and he didnt make money on the sale, he would lose money. simple as that

 

[Gooserider]

I understand the dealer side on this in that they need to make money to stay in business, but I also think there is a significant communications issue as well - We have been taught, usually from experience that major consumer goods (such as appliances) have certain warrantee "packages" that come with them, which normally includes some length of time where there are no charges for parts, labor, or service calls...

From all that has been said in the thread, it seems like a large part of the problem is that the stove maker (Harmon in this case, don't know about others) is offering a warrantee "package" that doesn't include the things one customarily expects, and this is NOT being made clear to the customer...

Does the dealer say "Oh, don't worry the stove has an x year warrantee" and let the customer make the wrong assumption about what is covered (but which makes the deal look better)

Or does the dealer say "The stove comes with an x year warrantee, but it does not cover this part of the costs, so you will need to pay $___ if there is a problem?

I would consider the second statement to be honest dealing, the first to be sharp trading at best, bordering on unethical / deceptive business practices...

Gooserider