THIS WEEK, I HAVE had some problems with a couple of things I own, and these little niggles got me to wondering if our expectations of car companies may be higher than we apply to other companies.
The first problem concerns a pair of spectacles. As with all fashion specs, the frames were over $500. It seems the less there is of them, the higher the price tag. Add in some multi-focal lenses (the frames aren’t much use without them!) and the all-up price was just shy of $1000.
After a few months, I lost one of those little padded bits that sit on the ends of the arms and curl around your ear. It was a silly thing, but when you wear specs and go motor racing, you have to take your glasses off, pull on the helmet and then put your glasses back on. If you try to pull the helmet on while still wearing these flimsy frames, you’re sure to cause damage. Same thing when taking the helmet off – first remove your glasses. I was doing this a number of times on this particular day and towards the end of session, realised that there was an earpiece missing from one of the arms. Bugger!
I trundled off to the optometrist with the specs and ordered a new earpiece. “Sorry sir, you can only order them in pairs. And we’ll have to order them in. And since the frames are imported, that will take about four to six weeks. And it’ll cost you $60.” Double bugger!
Anyway, the pair of earpieces duly arrived and fitted. God only knows what I was supposed to do with the extra earpiece.
Some time later, I noticed that the arms were looking a little odd. Where the earpieces attach to the arms, there are two screws on each side. I’d guess it’s more for appearance and design than engineering. Both arms were looking bent where the screws sit and, at the most inconvenient time (of course) one of them finally snapped off altogether. A helpful technician taped it all back together but for the rest of the event (and until I could get home and grab another pair), I looked like the fat kid in Lord of the Flies.
So, back to the optometrist. Before ordering, I wanted to know roughly what I’d be up for. “Sorry sir, we don’t have any in stock. We’ll have to order them in from overseas. It will take four to six weeks. And no, we have no idea what they’ll cost.” Two weeks later, I was told that “the parts for your Joshi Jazawa frames are not available” so my only option is to bin the otherwise perfectly good frames and lenses and opt for a new pair.
Now to another little aggravation. We have one of those cantilevered outdoor umbrellas. We chose a well-known brand assuming after-sales service and support (if we needed any) would be better than for an unknown import. A little later, a bracket at the top broke. It was a flimsy piece of plastic that held everything in place. Once broken, the umbrella was effectively useless. I contacted the company, Coolaroo (ironically, their slogan is “Made for Life”) thinking to myself that the part itself should cost no more than a few dollars and be relatively easy to fit. “I’m sorry sir, we don’t carry spare parts for that product.” So for the want of a two dollar part, a $200 product becomes junk. No amount of remonstration on my part would sway the company, even when I pointed out that the part was obviously not suitable for the task.
We managed to come up with a solution that was neither pretty nor permanent and we’ve eked an extra 12 months out of the umbrella but inevitably, the improvised solution has failed and I am now shopping for a new umbrella, despite the canopy, frame and stand all being perfectly serviceable.
And then there was our washing machine. Apparently, a design fault meant there was a possibility that it would set itself on fire. The company concerned offered to fix the problem at no cost to its customers, but until they could, we weren’t confident to turn the machine on and leave it to its own devices. The technician duly arrived, fiddled around with the front controls and assured us all was now well.
A few months later, we kept getting emails from the manufacturer warning us of the fault and asking us to contact them for a fix. We pointed out that we had done so and their technician had fixed the fault. It didn’t stop the emails that kept arriving on a regular basis.
Then we received a letter from the retailer who had taken it upon himself to resolve the issue. Apparently, the ACCC weren’t satisfied with Samsung’s response and the ACCC demanded that the company recall the faulty machines. Nothing much was happening – the manufacturer simply didn’t have the resources to recall all the faulty machines (or apparently, records of ownership, or of the machines they had serviced) and certainly had nowhere to store the machines once they had been recalled.
The retailer offered us (and anyone else who had bought the affected machines from him) the choice of a full refund, replacement with another brand of machine or replacement with the same brand. We chose to replace with the same brand because it still fulfilled our requirements, as it had done when we first chose it. The only problem was, the new model was more expensive than the one we had bought. We also had to pay out for another extended warranty, and there was a $50 delivery, installation and a charge to remove the old machine.
Suddenly, through no fault of our own, we faced a $200-odd expense to get ourselves back to where we should have been from the start. Of course, we could have taken the refund and started searching for another washing machine, or replaced our machine with a lesser (but similarly priced) machine, but that didn’t suit us.
So, those of you still reading are tempted to ask, “What’s this got to do with car companies?”
Imagine for a moment that the scenarios I have described were transposed to a car. Sure, cars cost a lot more than spectacles, washing machines or outdoor umbrellas, but the principle is the same.
Car companies are required to hold spare parts for the vehicles they sell for a number of years (I believe ten, but may be wrong), long after production of that particular model has ceased. If there is a proven design fault or weakness, car companies are required to recall the affected models and make good. And imagine how annoyed you’d be if you lost, say, a badge but had to buy the full set of badges to replace the missing one.
When there is a major problem such as we witnessed with Volkswagen, car companies are held accountable. Recalls are hugely expensive, but the car companies cannot avoid them if their products are found to be sub-standard.
Car companies offer comprehensive warranties for their products, which are much, much more complex than a washing machine, umbrella or pair of spectacles. Most will offer three years and 100,000km. More and more are offering unlimited kilometre warranties, many are moving to five-year warranties and one, Kia, offers a seven year unlimited kilometre warranty. My spectacles, washing machine and umbrella came with one year warranties. They weren’t expected to cope with the kind of day-in day-out treatment I happily ask of my cars.
I think we get a pretty good deal from car companies. Which is not to say we shouldn’t get annoyed and angry when our cars let us down. But let’s not tar them all with the same brush or apply standards to them that we don’t apply to other products and categories.
If you’ve had a problem with your vehicle, or battled a warranty claim, let us know what you think. Did you get a fair go? Was the problem serious or trivial? Was it resolved? We’d love to hear your thoughts.