Archived Copies of Warranty Week

December 2002 to Today

Service Contracts and the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act:  This article, by two expert attorneys, is intended to help readers navigate the subtle boundaries between the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act and the service contract laws of the U.S. states, and to help explain the key differences between product warranties, service contracts, and insurance.
February 7, 2019
Top 100 Warranty Providers of 2017: While total claims and accruals fell last year, some companies saw their warranty costs soar. By comparing each company to itself over time, we can spot the most and least improved warranty providers. And we can also spot the accounting eccentricities of those few that act like nobody's watching.
March 15, 2018
FAST Act Lightens Delivery of Privacy Notices Burden for Service Contract Industry: Service contract providers, already entangled by a web of state and federal insurance laws, must now navigate the ramifications of new privacy regulations. But if they call themselves financial institutions and follow some other rules, they could also free themselves of the need to send out annual privacy notices to their customers.
January 14, 2016
The E-Warranty Act of 2015: The new law modernizes the options for compliance with the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act and should also facilitate the e-delivery of service contracts. But other e-commerce laws state that parties must first agree to the use of electronic documents. The FTC must now write regulations that address these and other issues.
November 19, 2015
Warranty Year in Review: While some companies enjoyed record highs on the stock market, others suffered as rising warranty costs cut into profits. Some even went out of business. And top automakers once and for all proved how useless the TREAD Act is when it comes to protecting customers.
January 8, 2015
Warranty Seminar: Last month, a business intelligence software developer sponsored a morning seminar on the topic of the TREAD Act and warranty claims. For those who couldn't make it, here's a brief overview of the proceedings.
July 27, 2004
Warranty Measures: Matching warranty claims and accruals to reserves has always been a balancing act. Now it must be done in public, making it harder to conceal raids on the reserve fund or spikes in claims. But it's also easier to see how a company's quality improvements and claims reductions can translate to bottom-line gains by reducing the need for reserves.
May 25, 2004
Is the TREAD Act Working? It may still be too early to say for sure, but recent auto safety-related announcements have been filled with specific quantitative data about warranty claims and failure rates. Could it be that the TREAD Act's Early Warning Reporting system is really doing its job?
March 16, 2004
Don't TREAD On Me: NHTSA has announced that TREAD Act reports will be presumed to be confidential. If, as some expect, NHTSA won't be able to analyze the flood of data it's about to receive, and it won't release that data to the public, what's the benefit of compliance beyond penalty avoidance?
November 10, 2003
Don't TREAD On Me: Estimates of the cost of TREAD Act compliance vary all the way from the U.S. government's own $89 million figure up to a $1.7 billion estimate recently published by AMR Research. While small manufacturers continue to count their actual costs, the government continues to insist those costs will be close to zero.
November 3, 2003
Don't TREAD On Me: While the top tier of automotive manufacturers fumes about the burden of TREAD Act compliance, a group of small trailer manufacturers mounted a grassroots effort to gain an exemption for themselves from Congress.
October 27, 2003
Don't TREAD On Me: Part 2: Service providers and software vendors assess the costs and benefits of TREAD Act compliance.
April 7, 2003