CUSTOMERS are refusing to pay for product warranties because they say distributors are failing to honour them, according to one consumer and several computer and electronic retailers.

The manager of one computer shop says he’s heard of several cases of distributors asking customers to pay for repairs to products under warranty.
“Although most warranties promise to provide free parts and service for one year, I have heard some customers complain that distributors have asked them to pay for parts.

“There can also be a long waits for service, often with the excuse given that there are not enough parts,” he said.

Customers like Tarmwe township resident Ko Nyi Nyi say it’s not good enough: “Distributors need to respect the warranties they have offered or the customers won’t come back.

“When my television had to be repaired one month after purchase, the service centre told me it would be two months until they could return it because there weren’t any parts,” he said.

Worse yet, Ko Nyi Nyi said the centre asked him to pay for the parts, even though they were covered by the warranty. Unsurprisingly, Ko Nyi Nyi says he will never buy any products from that business again.

Ko Si Thu is the manager of the Parami branch of Lu Gyi Min Cellphone Villas. Most of the phones he sells go to buyers who skip year-long warranties – which add another 7 percent to the phone’s cost – and accept the shop’s three-month cover.

He said the longer warranties are problematic for retailers and consumers alike because the delay between when a phone is bought overseas and delivered in Myanmar is not added to the warranty period.

This means a phone bought by the Lu Gyi Min in January and sold in March will not have a one-year warranty; it will only have cover for 10 months.

Ko Si Thu said 3-5pc of customers return their purchases due to user faults – like electricity surges. For these warranty claims only the labour charges are covered and the customer pays for the new parts. A further 1pc of phones are returned with factory faults and all expenses are covered.

The spokesperson for another Yangon computer company said he has noticed that customers are changing their buying habits to account for the poor reputations of shop or distributor warranties, especially with cheap Chinese and Thai products available. “There is a price gap of about 20pc between computer products with warranties and those without,” he said.

He used the popular Canon IP 1300 model printer as an example.

He said the printer – complete with warranty – retails for around K63,000 but the same model without cover costs only K48,000. More than half of his customers, he said, take this option.

Ma Thin Zar, assistant manager of Panasonic’s customer relations office in Yangon, said warranties are a tricky issue.

“Most domestic electronics companies have their own service centres that are not under the parent company. But Panasonic’s Yangon service centre handles all the after-sale service for our outlets,” she said.

Ma Thin Zar says this means that for claims that involve manufacturer warranties – offered through the four official importers – most of the time the product will be repaired without delay.

Ko Si Thu said warranty disputes also highlighted a significant problem with after-sale service.

“In Myanmar, after-sale service is quite weak and it’s important that we put more emphasis on improving this,” he said, adding that poor service of any kind is rarely forgotten.