Although a strong marketing message is a powerful device for attracting customers, when you analyze the offering, it might not be the bargain you expected.
When it comes to life safety systems, a product failure can result in anything from a minor inconvenience to a catastrophic event. Therefore, the important consideration is not whether the manufacturer will provide a replacement product free of charge under a lifetime warranty, but rather the reliability of the product itself.
All equipment has a natural lifespan. For fire detection products, manufacturers recommend replacement after 10 years, and therefore, you should replace them after this period. However, when making purchasing decisions, it is just as important to consider reliability during the lifetime of the product.
Have you ever stopped to consider the cost of a failure? Let’s consider the least expensive option — a detector fails and causes a false alarm. Can you put costs against these activities:
All of these costs are likely to be 10 to 20 times the cost of the replacement device, and in the worst case scenario — a fire that is undetected or is detected late due to the faulty device — the costs are almost incalculable.
Not really — it just distracts from the more important purchasing criteria. Put simply: A lifetime warranty is no substitute for a reliable life safety product.
This is not easy as there is no generally available information identifying which manufacturer has the most reliable offering.
It is also worth noting that any reliability statistics have to be treated with a degree of caution, as they will often be formed from the number of units that have been sent back to the manufacturer. What they won’t — and can’t — account for are those units that have simply been disposed of and replaced without making a warranty claim. However, some manufacturers carry out regular surveys among their customers, and those that are confident about the quality of their products will have no problem discussing their findings.
Therefore, asking the right questions, seeking testimonials and references, and comparing and contrasting what the industry has to offer is highly advisable, and the key to selecting the most appropriate fire detection system.
This would be a reasonable assumption. Buying on initial cost alone can prove to be a false economy as cheaper devices may have a much lower mean time to failure rate compared to a more expensive premium product.
In addition, you’ll often find that it’s the low-cost end of the market that does not offer anything beyond a statutory warranty, and therefore, there is no comeback if the product causes problems.
Manufacturers of premium products will invest in technology to reduce the ongoing costs associated with them, and minimize unwanted alarms. For example, products that include a compensation feature against dust or dirt build up will automatically adjust the alarm threshold to account for any contamination within the sensor chamber, resulting in increased reliability.
Not at all. In fact, it has been proven that if any failures are likely to occur, they will happen within the first year of installation, so three years is a more than adequate period of time to be covered.
The danger in concentrating on the duration of the warranty is that it distracts from the real issues surrounding reliability, quality of product, and total cost of ownership. Always look beyond the hype.
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This is very true because regardless of manufacture’s years of warranty provided there are times when products turned to be faulty. I think warranty is given to help address and fix any faulty product by manufacture within the warranty period.
I also see product warranty as the product life span, therefore the years of warranty could determine the actual life span of that product as provided by manufacture’s years of warranty for that products
@George Brown: IMO I feel warrant and quality does not have any relationship since the warranty is being issued for the product where quality is something which comes as an output from that product. So quality cannot be linked with warranty for sure.
@N De Silva. Point of correction l did not compare warranty and quality rather l compared warranty and product life span. Quality is entirely different
A warranty needs to reflect the actual lifetime of a product, really. If a warranty is ‘lifetime’ that instils often false confidence that the procut will last a lifetime.
Agree with gbrowns response there, and yourself, that quality and warranty can’t be linked. Manufacturers needs to be honest with their customers on the lifespan of a product, especially as we’re talking about life safety products.
Let me clarify this , most products on our market have warranty of 1-5years after which no manufacture will replace the products ,fix it or repair them because they consider the products have expired their life span,so therefore any extra years of products usage out of their warranty are added benefits enjoyed by consumers.
Thanks gbrown, seems clear, and makes sense.
Thanks everyone and it seems clear what we should expect from manufactures warranty and their products