Optional

An ad yesterday made me wonder:

The product - in this case the new Miele S7 - comes with something extra: optional 10 year warranty.
Checking their own website one of the features (benefit?) states:

Long Term Reliability: the S7 has been designed and tested for a life of 1000 working hours, that's up to 20 years use!

So what's up with this optional 10 year warranty? (Extra cost of £ 30.00)

A product is promoted - guaranteed? - to last at least 10 years, according to their own statement even up to 20 years - or it is not.

Buy it without the optional extra costs of warranty and it is guaranteed to break down within 10 years time?

Comments

[Steve Roesler]

Karin,

I had to come over and check this out.

Wouldn't want to be the salesperson trying to explain to customers why they should plop done the money for the extended warranty.

I wonder if we'll see more about this?!

Decided to Tweet it. http://tinyurl.com/ca7x7m

[Karin H.]

Cheers for the tweet Steve.

It is crazy, not? Specially in these modern days where the 'marketing power' is more and more in the hands of the consumer.

Karin H

At 16:13 19/03/2009, you wrote:

[Steve Roesler]

That's just it, Karin. I am genuinely surprised that as they no doubt reviewed the advert copy, no one asked, "If I were blogging this, what could come back to haunt me?"

Oh, well...it gives us more material:-)

[Karin H.]

Guess it falls in the category: job jargon. Every electrical machine seems to come with an extra extended or optional warranty - since the early 90's, but then it was just 2 or 3 years extra. Nowadays the quality of these machines improves - so 'logically' they extend the extra, optional warranty period.

"We've always done this as extra customer service, so we keep doing this"

Can't you hear them thinking just that?

Never mind that the perception of what true customer service is has changed beyond their extra warranty or the quality of their own products has gone beyond their new extended warranty period! Don't thinks most of them have even heard about consumer blogging ;-)

Karin H

At 16:59 19/03/2009, you wrote: