What incentive does Scubapro have to warranty equipment after it has been resold? Do they want potential new customers turning to the resale market instead? Do they want to increase the cost of the product to their customers in order to add value for their customers' customers? As far as what is fair, I think if they are clear about their policies and fulfill the obligations they have explicitly undertaken, then they have been fair. If you don't like their warranty policy, you an always choose not to accept second-hand free equipment manufactured by them.
By the way, do you think you would have gotten the computer for free if you could get a battery change for free under warranty? Maybe, but in general one would expect the resale price to reflect the lack of warranty, and in this case, the difficulty in getting a battery change.
Good point on that!!! I will say this though.... I never asked for anything free though because I would never expect anything for free (service or battery change). From what Mike stated it seems that the company really tries to bank on people no filling out and returning the warranty registration cards and or loosing them in order to keep the profit margins high. Do you disagree?
It doesn't really bother me so much about them discontinuing the product or discontinuing the servicing on a particular model and offering the original owner of that said product a deal on a new one(I think that is great, especially if it is a really good deal). I would definitely understand why they wouldn’t offer that deal to a secondhand owner. I do however think it is horrible if you can't get a battery replaced or some other general service work performed by the manufacturer simply because you are a secondhand owner of a product if it is a product that is still able to be serviced by them (I'm not talking about servicing it for free or for any large discounts). That is why I am waiting on clarification from Mike on that issue in my last post (I am thinking that I misunderstood it and that they will in fact service other units that they make regardless of ownership status, if not that is nuts)
I think it can be looked at from a few different angles.... They would make the about the same amount of money whether or not they honored second hand customers or not because the original owners paid them for their product so they have already made their money in most warranty and recall cases. However, I do think that in this particular case with this computer that they started to realize that it was more cost efficient to just offer a discount to the customer after realizing that the design sucked due to the fact it was too difficult for their own service techs to cost effectively change the battery. That should be obvious, why else would they do such a nice thing. I will applaud them for treating the original customer good in this situation instead of saying “tough luck buy a new one from us now because we no longer service this model” (But if you look at this closer this was just a simple marketing strategy obviously done to keep the customers coming back to them)
The fact is that the resale market typically will not affect the retail market because generally speaking both markets will remain a constant (little fluctuation here and there of course) and will usually only be affected by the economy. Retail buyers are going to continue to buy new equipment from them and second hand buyers will continue to buy used equipment regardless of warranties.
I don't think it is very profitable for anyone to buy anything retail in hopes of selling it for a profit (I sure wish I could though
) For most people including myself, most of the time when selling the older equipment it is to upgrade and nobody is really expecting to make a profit from it and most of us are just hoping to recoup some of the investment in order to lessen the burden of the new gear price. Now with that said everyone tries to keep their eyes open for a good deal to come along for themselves or to resell, tinker/ destroy
or to just entertain them for a little while.
This just came to mind....
1- If the product had a safety recall (which did happen on some of their models) they don't honor the second hand customers either? To me a safety recall should be the product and not the owner, period. If they replace or modify something for the original owner on a recall they should for a second hand owner as well, just like in the auto industry.
2- Talking about servicing (assuming that they refuse to service any equipment from second hand users) they should agree to service any equipment (that is serviceable of course) that is sent in to them regardless of original owner or secondhand owner status. This is a win, win situation for them because they will be making money off of whoever owns their product at this point. (I am looking forward to hearing from Mike on this issue just to clarify more, I would think that they would service equipment regardless of the ownership status)
I know that the dive industry and the auto industry are two very different industries but it is a very easy comparison when speaking on warranties and recalls.
