Archived Copies of Warranty Week

January 1, 2020 to today

Extended Protection Plans: Change what you think is working. A truly effective extended protection plan program should harness predictive analytics. Failing to optimize extended protection plans could mean leaving money and valuable data on the table.
April 2, 2020
Auto Parts Supplier Warranty Report: Slowly but surely, the companies that manufacture powertrain components such as engines and transmissions have seen their share of the warranty expenses rise, while the other parts suppliers have seen their share slowly shrink. And both claims and reserves are at record levels.
March 26, 2020
Truck Industry Warranty Metrics: Claims are up but so are sales. Warranty reserve fund balances hit a new high at the end of 2019, and claims came close to doing so. And extended warranty sales continue to soar for most of the top on-highway and off-road truck, bus, industrial, construction, and farm equipment manufacturers.
March 19, 2020
Homebuilder Warranty Report: As happened in 2007, the warranty metrics of the U.S.-based single-family home builders seem to have hit a bit of a plateau in 2019. Unit sales and warranty claims are up, but all the other metrics are little-changed from 2018 levels. And now, it's hard to imagine how 2020 will turn out.
March 12, 2020
U.S. Auto Warranty Metrics: In 2019, warranty metrics improved for Tesla and deteriorated for GM and Ford. While Tesla still sets aside the most funds per unit sold to finance future warranty costs, its current claims rate is one of the lowest in the business. And while GM and Ford spend less per vehicle, their vehicles also cost less, and their costs have been rising for several years in a row.
March 5, 2020
Machine Learning in Warranty Management: Quite a few companies talk about machine learning as the next step to improve warranty management. However, in more detailed discussions, I haven't come across too many real solutions or active projects in that field. In this article I will discuss the topic in more detail -- what is machine learning, what are the comparable use cases in other areas, and which could be the most compelling applications for it in warranty management.
February 27, 2020
Warranty Claims & Reserves, Part 3: While some of the sub-groups within the buildings category are dominated by companies such as Whirlpool, Carrier, and GE, others contain dozens of similarly-sized manufacturers. And while some of their warranty metrics are all over the chart, others are clumped into relatively tight clusters, like a marksman who never misses his target.
February 20, 2020
Warranty Claims & Reserves, Part 2: The electronics sector tends to have shorter warranties than other sectors such as vehicles. Yet their warranty costs have ranged all the way up to four percent of sales. And while the average size of their warranty reserves is on the small side, some industry segments keep very large balances.
February 13, 2020
Warranty Claims & Reserves, Part 1: Using three metrics: claims, reserves, and sales, we can calculate which industries and even which individual companies are over or under the averages for both their spending on claims and the capacity of their reserve funds. And by charting the results, we can see which companies, industries or manufacturing sectors have the most consistent warranty expenses.
February 6, 2020
Warranty Expense Inflation: Prices rise and so does the cost of warranty. Over the past 17 years, prices in dollars have risen almost 40%. If we were to adjust warranty expenses for inflation, it makes the most recent claims and reserve data look a bit worse.
January 30, 2020
Product Warranty Sectors: By dividing all warranty-issuing companies into three groups -- vehicles, buildings, and electronics -- we can look at trends over time in terms of claims, accruals, reserves, and the percentage of sales revenue spent on warranty expenses. And we can also see that those expense rates have recently taken an upturn for some of them after years of declines.
January 23, 2020
The Biggest 9-Month Warranty Expense Rate Changes: While we can't directly compare one company's warranty expense rates to another's, we can compare each company's current metrics against their year-ago levels. And then we can compare the size of the changes, to reveal which companies are seeing costs fall and which are seeing them soar.
January 16, 2020
Warranty Marketing & Millennials: Dan Hulkower, the Senior Vice President at After, Inc., explains how to effectively engage the Millennial buyer. They don't trust traditional advertising but they love to search for coupons and discounts. They like blogs, social media, and online shopping, and they love to both read and write online reviews. And they actually open the direct mail they receive.
January 9, 2020