I have a number of Netgear Ethernet cards and a nice fast switch from them. Alas one of the PCI Ethernet cards I have didn't work when I installed it in a machine, nor did it work in a different machine, and with either Windows or Linux. The box has "Lifetime Warranty" in big letters on it, so when I tried to get them to swap it for a good card, they said the warranty was good for three years only!
I'm going to write to them at my local (UK) office and complain, it's not as if replacing a ã10 card is going to drive them into bankruptcy. If they don't honour the warranty, I'll write to trading standards to complain that it's a misleading claim.
If the warranty had only been for 2 years, I've had the card longer than that, I can understand, but if it says lifetime, then I expect it to be for the life.
Every time I see "Lifetime garanty" written on a box, I wonder if the garanty is valid for the lifetime of the buyer or the lifetime of the product.
In the latter case, does "lifetime" mean that once the product is dead/broken, the garanty is void? In this case, "lifetime garanty" would actually means "no garanty". Or maybe it means that the "lifetime" is the lifetime of the series? Then the garanty ends when they stop producing the item.
Or maybe (just maybe) all those vendors are a big bunch of damn liars. You can't discard this possibility...
Re:Whose lifetime?
ajt on 2004-11-25T14:16:43
I fear that most vendors are just liars, selling substandard crap.
There are good vendors out there, but they are few and far between. I know that Karimor of old use to offer a lifetime waranty on their top end products. If it ever wore or broke they'd fix it, and it was fully transferrable too. I have a lower spec bag that is well out of it's warranty period, everytime I break or tear something, they've fixed it for me - for free. Sometimes it's worth paying more if the support is any good.
Re:human years or computer years
ajt on 2004-11-25T15:24:20
Quite possibly, but it means my Dell desktop is half way through it's third lifetime... and my still functional CBM-64 is about to start it's eighth...!
Does some kit extra lives like a cat then?
