Archived Copies of Warranty Week

January 1, 2006 to today

Warranty Compliance Online: Four years after first looking into online compliance with warranty laws, we find the situation has deteriorated, with many Web merchants completely ignoring disclosure rules. And the FTC remains silent.
December 19, 2006
Product Warranty Spending: With most of the third quarter financial reports behind us, it's looking like warranty spending is up only slightly in 2006. But the changes at some of the top warranty providers are very large, in both dollar and percentage terms.
December 12, 2006
Service After Sales: Getting the biggest bang for your buck in
after-sales solutions through benchmarking.
December 5, 2006
Extended Warranties: Consumer Reports took their best shot. Now the industry has responded, citing the value, price, convenience and savings of time and money as some of the benefits of enhanced service plans.
November 29, 2006
Extended Warranties: Consumer Reports says they're not needed except in a few cases. Others say they're a good value at a reasonable price. As the holiday shopping season begins, whose advice will buyers follow?
November 21, 2006
The increasing importance of reverse logistics in technology companies.  
November 14, 2006
Warranty Claims vs. Accruals: Using a few key warranty metrics, it's becoming easier to tell when a given company is managing its claims and accruals responsibly. It's also becoming easier to tell when things run off the rails, even if a company makes no specific disclosures of a crisis.
November 8, 2006
Warranty Stability:  Whether a company pays a little or a lot for warranty claims, the stability of the reserve fund should be preserved. But out of the top 100 warranty providers, only 24 seem to be doing it well, as measured by changes in some key ratios over time.
October 31, 2006
Extended Warranty Pricing: Retailers charge a premium of anywhere from 1.2% to 36% for a Canon EOS 30D extended warranty, and anywhere from 5.6% to 43% for a Panasonic 42" plasma TV service plan. With Target now entering the market, service plan prices will be under increasing pressure.
October 24, 2006
Automotive Warranty:  For some the trend is up, while for others warranty costs are falling. And those who make vehicles aimed at either summer or winter activities are seeing a seasonal pattern in their warranty costs.
October 17, 2006
Copy/Print/Scan/Fax Warranties: While in this digital era it has become increasingly difficult to find standalone office machines on the market, it has also become very difficult to find anything for sale with more (or less) than a year's warranty.
October 11, 2006
Warranty Management: The Next Frontier in Cost Reduction and Product Quality Improvement? A new approach for exploiting warranty data offers manufacturing organizations a means of quickly finding and fixing product failures.
October 3, 2006
Top 100 Warranty Providers: In this midyear report, we look at who's up and who's down compared to a year ago. Driven by acquisitions and longer warranties, some companies are paying out more than ever before. But others have found ways to cut their outlays by big numbers.
September 26, 2006
Digital Projector Warranties: Engineers have known since the days of Thomas Edison that bulbs eventually burn out. For customers looking to buy a projector, however, the high cost of replacement lamps and the relatively brief warranties provided for them aren't always top of mind.
September 20, 2006
Projector & Copier Warranties: 
September 18, 2006
Warranty Financial Management: Part 1: Defining Warranty Expense Management.
September 12, 2006
Television Warranties: Bigger is usually better, when it comes to TV warranties. While the old tube TVs are more or less disposable, flat screen vendors usually either fix them in the home or send someone out to pick up the units that fail. And while a year is the most common warranty period, several TV manufacturers issue multi-year warranties on their premium lines.
September 7, 2006
CD & DVD Warranties: Only Sony is willing to back its optical disc products with multi-year warranties, and only its high end units benefit from the five-year coverage. Everyone else issues manufacturer's warranties of one year or less.
August 29, 2006
Disk Drive Warranties: As our warranty tour continues, we've finally found a product segment for which warranties vary tremendously from one company to the next. And competitive marketing strategies seem to matter more than either product specs or price.
August 22, 2006
Digital Media Warranties: Digital music players and digital cameras, despite prices that sometimes surpass several thousand dollars, are never warranted for more than a year. Some manufacturers will cover labor charges for only the first 90 days, which pushes these units right to the edge of disposability, given the cost of repairs.
August 15, 2006
Peripheral Warranties: With computer printers and monitors, older technologies frequently get longer warranties than new. And while one would think higher prices mean longer warranties, that doesn't seem to be the case.
August 8, 2006
Computer Warranties: While most computers still carry a one-year warranty, some are covered for only 90 days while many office computers still cling to three-year warranty periods.
August 2, 2006
Computer Warranties: While most computers still carry a one-year warranty, some are covered for only 90 days while many office computers still cling to three-year warranty periods.
August 1, 2006
Ford's Powertrain Warranties: How does a carmaker get people talking about product quality and confidence? By lengthening the warranty on the engine and transmission. But it didn't work so well for Chrysler, so why should it work for Ford?
July 25, 2006
Warranty Research: As one important new warranty research project concludes, another is beginning. AberdeenGroup's warranty report is now available for download, while APQC's survey questions are available for a first look.
July 18, 2006
Warranty Reporting vs. Analytics: One turns the past into charts. The other turns the future into actionable items. But some people who know the difference between the two don't want to talk about it, for fear that they'll lose an edge on their competition.
July 11, 2006
Transforming a Warranty Program: IBM drives warranty service quality improvements through a Business Partners network. Its new Service Advisory Council suggests paying bonuses for achieving certain performance metrics.
July 5, 2006
Warranty Investments: One Wall Street-weary extended warranty administrator is going private while another was swept up by an acquisitive company out to corner the market for mobile phone extended warranties. And then there's ServiceBench, carefully planning its next logical step.
June 27, 2006
Auto Warranty vs. Quality: Does the total cost of warranty have any correlation to product quality? Based on the worldwide claims rates seen for the top five carmakers and quality data collected in the U.S. by J.D. Power and Associates, one does seem to be related to the other.
June 20, 2006
Shadow Drivers of Warranty Cost: Survey data suggests that some auto service technicians are wasting their time by replacing the wrong parts and perhaps too many perfectly good parts because they don't have access to the right information.
June 13, 2006
Warranty vs. Earnings: While a few Wall Street analysts are beginning to treat warranty as a leading economic indicator, fluctuations in claims rates don't always translate into earnings shifts. Yet warranty news is already moving stock prices.
June 6, 2006
Warranty Inspections: Crawford and Company, already a major player in claims administration services , and home inspections, wants to go deeper into the warranty business.
May 31, 2006
Warranty Compliance: The list of companies reporting upon their warranty accounts is constantly changing as new companies begin complying with the new rules while old companies close down or get acquired. A handful of companies sometimes forget to include details about their warranty spending, while others simply disregard the rules.
May 23, 2006
Warranty Marksmanship: Companies that accurately predict warranty claims and maintain adequate warranty reserves are at the top of their game. And now it's possible to compare their aim by looking at a chart that compares reserves to accruals.
May 16, 2006
Warranty Reserves: Over time, both companies and industries make consistent choices regarding how much revenue to put aside to fund future warranty claims, reflecting the outlook of their forecasters.
May 9, 2006
Computer & Electronics Warranties: As is the case in automotive, those with their brand names on the outside end up paying most of the warranty claims. But the computer OEMs don't pay out as much as some of the printer companies or the makers of high-end semiconductor production equipment.
May 2, 2006
Automotive Warranties: While GM and Ford spend the most on warranty, other types of vehicle manufacturers pay out a greater share of their total revenue on claims. And while most parts suppliers have relatively low claims rates, those in the aftermarket report some of the highest rates of all.
April 25, 2006
Top 50 Warranty Providers: While most large manufacturers saw warranty claims rise in 2005, most also saw sales gains that helped relieve the pain. Even GM and Ford saw only modest upticks in the percentage of sales they pay in claims. And some such as Boeing saw claims plummet.
April 19, 2006
High-Tech Warranties: Designing products that can be fixed easily or replaced quickly will reduce warranty expenses. What's required, though, isn't so much better software as better teamwork and planning. Meanwhile, a hunt for patterns and anomalies also works for fraud detection.
April 11, 2006
Warranty Claims Automation: For a motorcycle manufacturer and a home appliance manufacturer, it wasn't so much that their warranty systems were broke or that their costs were rising. It was just that their old warranty processes were inefficient and couldn't keep up with company growth.
April 4, 2006
Extended Warranty Advice: An industry expert tells retailers and manufacturers how to get more value from their extended warranty data, possibly helping them to decide what to sell and how to price it based on how much it costs to repair.
March 28, 2006
Warranty Legal Solutions: So often warranty cost reduction efforts are focused on either the product or the process. But what about the warranty itself? At the WCM Conference, an attorney explained how the right choice of words can limit liability and reduce warranty cost.
March 21, 2006
Early Warning Standards: Decades ago the AIAG helped set standards for electronic commerce when it developed new data interchange standards. Now it's doing similar work with warranty data communications standards, looking for ways to reduce delays, improve accuracy, and cut warranty claims costs.
March 14, 2006
Warranty Chain Management: After another successful conference, the warranty community has asked for an industry association in addition to the groups already operating. Warranty community builders said positive things. But now the hard work is just beginning.
March 7, 2006
Warranty Software: Good planning pays off as Ingersoll-Rand converts its first, second, and third business units to a new Web-based warranty claims processing system. Now, as other departments eye all that warranty data, the company looks for better reporting and analysis tools.
February 28, 2006
Extended Warranty Association: A new trade group aimed at vehicle service contract administrators plans to focus on certifying inspectors and other business issues, leaving the lobbying and legal efforts to others. But is that enough to attract the big industry players?
February 22, 2006
Manufacturer's Extended Warranties: Although retailers dominate the business, a handful of manufacturers do very well for themselves in the extended warranty business. Now a major bank's insurance unit wants to help more of them to launch service plan sales efforts.
February 14, 2006
Extended Warranty Bankruptcies: Like a tree falling in the woods, recent dot-com warranty failures went largely unnoticed by the media and unpredicted by either the regulators or the ratings agencies. So how can a customer be expected to make the right choice?
February 7, 2006
Fixing Computers: If it ain't broke but it won't work, making a warranty claim won't fix it. But some companies are now hiring "geeks" to sell PC tune-ups, or they're giving away free advice with their service plans, to help customers do everything from removing viruses to installing wi-fi modems.
January 31, 2006
Customer Recovery: While efforts to push warranty costs back onto suppliers have met with limited success, a handful of manufacturers have pushed most if not all of their warranty expenses back onto their customers.
January 24, 2006
Mark Your Calendars: Both pre- and post-show events now surround the WCM conference in early March, plus there are now additional warranty events to consider attending in February and June.
January 18, 2006
Product Warranty Trends: 2005 is shaping up to be a $27 billion year for the warranty industry, though claims still represent only 1.7% of sales. More than a dozen companies have cut their claims rates. Some manufacturers, however, have seen their claims rates soar into the danger zone.
January 10, 2006