Archived Copies of Warranty Week

December 2002 to Today

Implementing a New Warranty Management Solution  -- or Just Upgrading Your Existing Solution -- Can Make a Significant Improvement to Your Organization's Bottom Line.
August 10, 2017
Service Contract Pricing: Appliances: While the typical appliance service contract costs roughly 14% to 16% of the price of the product it protects, there is an enormous amount of variation, depending on which administrator the retailer works with, how long the contract lasts, and whether the product is low end or top of the line.
February 9, 2017
Service Contract Pricing: Refrigerators: The bigger the refrigerator, and the more it costs, the lower the ratio between its list price and the price of protecting it for a given length of time. And the longer the duration of coverage, the more it will cost, though the industry-wide ratio isn't close to a straight line in terms of cost per year.
January 19, 2017
Microsoft Complete & AmTrust: Rather than keeping it in-house as they added more hardware to their product line, the manufacturer partnered with an insurance company to launch a suite of protection plans globally. And as the insurance company learned to work at the same Internet speed as the manufacturer, it also learned to love completely new product categories for which there's no loss cost data to help them.
December 17, 2015
Warranty Software Acquisition: Engineering wants to talk to warranty and so does manufacturing. And warranty needs user manuals and parts from them. No single company's software can make them all talk to each other, not even a CAD/CAM company like PTC. So it bought warranty software company 4CS to round out its product line.
September 15, 2011
Motorcycle Service Contracts: As with passenger cars, the policies exclude consumables, accidental damage, and routine maintenance. And as is done with RVs, they are starting to cover perils such as being stranded far from home. But some say that takes them dangerously close to the line between service contracts and insurance. Others wonder if these new bells and whistles are all that necessary.
May 6, 2010
Medical Equipment Warranties: Doctors, hospitals, and laboratory technicians want sturdy and reliable medical systems, and for the most part the manufacturers that supply them have been steady and predictable. But every once in a while, a massive recall or a production glitch causes warranty costs to spike. And it's when the trend line leaves its historical range that we know there's something wrong.
October 8, 2009
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
Warranty Software: In the automotive market, sooner or later virtually every software package has to interact with warranty data. And why not? Warranty is a $9 billion activity for vehicle manufacturers, with a direct impact on the bottom line. It's also one of the best available measures of a product's quality and reliability, and it could be as useful to the engineers as it already is to the accountants.
July 28, 2003
HP Integrates the Compaq Product Line, and Unites its Warranty and Service Upgrade Options. But extended warranty revenue isn't what it could be, and buyers facing too many choices may instead be choosing to do nothing.
May 19, 2003