Overheard in an Office Supply Superstore today.

We live and work in a rural resort area and are blessed enough to have an Office Supply Superstore here. I went to get a thumb drive to put some phone data onto and a corporate cheerleader from the big city was in talking to the tech guy. I actually heard her say: "If anyone mentions the manufactures warranty tell them that that only covers the laptop while it is being built. Like if a screw was not put in and it causes failure. It is a manufacture's warranty"
 
Ummm. Ok times are really getting tough somewhere along the line if that becomes a common mantra.

BobF
Sounds more like somebody talking about something without actual knowledge behind the words.

Probably a member here...

slartabartfast
Actually, the lady is not so far from correct. The typical manufacturer warrants his product to be "free from defects in materials or manufacture/workmanship." That does not cover anything that is not already wrong with the machine when you buy it, and if it fails at a later point you would have to prove that there was a problem with how it was assembled that caused the failure. The assumption, and this is an erroneous assumption in a significant number of cases, is that if there was no error in how it was made, or the stuff it is made from it should last at least as long as the warranty duration. In effect, the warranty contract sets a limit on the time you are allowed to discover the fault that was present when you bought the machine.
 
Some, but by no means all, separately purchased "extended warranties" actually will provide a replacement for the product if it fails for any reason other than accident or abuse. In other words even if it was properly manufactured, and the materials used were not defective, you will get a new product. It is in effect an insurance policy that pays if the product stops working while under contract. 

I realize that this is anecdotal, but my personal experience is that I've never had a MFR fail to honor a warranty within the given time frame of the warranty.  The language we're discussing has evolved to this point in order to protect MFRs from mishandling/misuse/abuse, which are beyond the scope of basic MFR warranties.  Add-on warranties go further, and claim to cover accidental damage as well.  I don't know how well these get honored because I never buy them.

BobF
I realize that this is anecdotal, but my personal experience is that I've never had a MFR fail to honor a warranty within the given time frame of the warranty.  The language we're discussing has evolved to this point in order to protect MFRs from mishandling/misuse/abuse, which are beyond the scope of basic MFR warranties.  Add-on warranties go further, and claim to cover accidental damage as well.  I don't know how well these get honored because I never buy them.

I think your experience is the norm. Since the purpose of the warranty is to act as a sales enticement, legislators and courts have generally taken the view that limitations on warranties that often appear in the actual contract language will not be strictly construed, or will simply not be legal at all in their jurisdictions. There are additionally practical problems in managing a too strict warranty policy for the manufacturer. If he were to try to limit remedies to a showing of a defect, he would either need to accept the customers statement or to provide his own engineering expertise to examine the product and diagnose the cause of the problem in a reasonably short time. For many products, such effort to diagnose or repair would be too costly to justify compared to just replacing the defective unit so long as there are not many problem units or the product is not humorously expensive.
 
Often a new (or previously refurbished) unit is just shipped and the old one is either trashed or sent to a third world dismantling facility for refurbishment and that serviced unit will either be sold as a used item or returned to a subsequent customer who returns his newly defective unit under warranty. Additionally the loss of good will incurred by denying replacement within the warranty period may well be a significant cost, especially in the era of social media, where disgruntled customers can amplify their disappointment with little effort. 
 
In practice the manufacturer's warranty is going to be honored so long as a problem occurs in the covered time period. Most original defects will manifest within that period. Failures from normal wear and tear will eventually manifest, but typically these will appear after the time that the insurers selling "extended warranties" are willing to cover. So these extended warranties are seldom worth the cost, and I never buy them either.