This warranty offer is not restricted to cars and heavy equipment alone but also small electrical or electronic products. This big warranty offer awaits the customer even at cloth shops where the salesman will remind you that there will not be any exchange after washing.
Of course, these warranties are nice if the shop owners honored them whenever a customer had a complaint with a product. However, the reality is bitter. Most often, customers find warranties not being honored.
Customers who are encouraged to buy something after believing it is covered by warranty later realize that shop owners usually give excuses to avoid their commitments when the customers approach them with defective products. So they become victims of cheating in broad daylight, according to a report in Al-Riyadh daily.
Many customers have had such bitter experiences even at the hands of authorized dealers of brand products. These dealers use numerous excuses not to replace the defective items or fulfill their commitments outlined by the warranty papers. Common excuses include blaming the customer for “fault in usage,” “deliberately damaging the product,” as well as claiming the warranty only covers certain defects.
Other shop owners ask the customer to take the product to the company or factory that manufactured it. Fayeza Muhammad, a Saudi woman, recalls such an experience.
“I bought an electrical appliance costing SR380 from a shop. There was a one-year warranty on the product. But only six days after the purchase, it stopped working, so I took it to the shop,” she said, adding that the salesman’s reaction was strange and surprising. “He said the product was from the manufacturing company and that the warranty was sold on their behalf. He told me to take the product to the company.”
When Fayeza asked the salesman about the company headquarters or any of its branches, he replied that he did not know where they were. “I browsed the Internet and found out the details of its authorized agent in Jeddah. When I contacted them, they asked me to bring the product to their office,” she said. Fayeza noted that when the product was taken to the office, their reaction was disappointing. “They said they were sorry and that this was not their product and a duplicate. I was asked to get a refund from the store,” she said.
She took the product again to the shop. This time, the salesman told her that the product was 100 percent original but the company did not want to honor the warranty.
Salah Al-Johani is another victim of stores’ failure to honor warranties. “I received a one-year warranty when buying an air-conditioner from the showroom of a leading electrical company. After installing it in my sitting room, I started it. Its cooling function was superb. After four days, a relative visited our house. When he asked me to reduce the coolness I could not do it,” he said.
Al-Johani then contacted the showroom, which sent an engineer. He was told by the engineer that there had been an internal defect due to excessive use of the A/C. Therefore, Al-Johani would have to bear the cost of the spare part. He then contacted the manufacturer and was told exactly the same thing.
“I have been still using the A/C with the same defect for two years. It knows only how to super cool,” he said, adding that there is no use having warranties.
Nasir Al-Tuwaim, chairman of the Consumer Protection Society, said the organization has chalked out more than 35 ambitious programs aimed at protecting consumers from being cheated and exploited by businesses. “These include issues related to warranties and so forth. We are awaiting approval from the higher authorities. We have drawn a clear road map for each sector,” he said.
According to Al-Tuwaim, there are at least 42 sectors with reported commercial fraud and incidents of cheating. “In the near future, we will make an announcement about the road map and its implementation,” he said, while noting that the society is striving hard to enforce the best programs to protect consumers. “We prepared all these programs with the prime objective of serving the interests of consumers and protecting their money.”
