v2 exposes the long warranty scam
If there's one thing I hate more than Sean Paul (and to a lesser extent Grey's Anatomy) it's getting scammed. Normally it doesn't take more than a spam email with the subject "I totally saw you last night driving!" to fool me, but goddamn it, after about the fifteenth time, I learn. Over the past few years, I've been keen on exposing every little thing that's wrong with the world courtesy of tommyv2.com. I decided I was going to write this article to help all of you out in your miserable little lives, just in time for Christmas.
Many years ago, all major stores exchanged their dot-matrix receipt printers for newfangled thermal ones. Economically it made sense in 2 different ways:
1) Thermal printing is cheaper, since no ink is ever used. It just uses cheap plastic-y heat-sensitive paper to write on, using heat
2) Now they can fucking scam us all to maximize profit
When you buy a decent product, it usually comes with a fat warranty. 3 years, 10 years, lifetime warranty, fucking forever warranty, etc. It's a major selling point, and it gives you all sorts of confidence in the product, so you spend your head-earned money. "If anything ever goes wrong, just bring in the product with the receipt," they tell you. As soon as you get it home, you quickly unpack everything and carefully store the receipt in your personal files or in the original box. Hell, it's even likely that those places are dark, cool, and safe.
Little Jimmy is all happy until his camera breaks - luckily with 11 days left in the warranty. No problem, right? Let's now examine how the evil corporations fuck us all more than the average corporate gangbang.
This receipt is dated December 6, 2005. That's only a year ago. Looks pretty good, right? Sure it does. No problems here at all.
This receipt is dated October 17, 2005. Well how can this be, it's only 6-ish weeks older than the one above - but it looks like hell. It's faded - some parts are pretty hard to read (especially to the dinosaur working at customer service with the +6.75 prescription glasses). The thermal paper print is fading quickly.
I estimate that in 6 months the above receipt will be completely useless. And let's not forget that this was in a closet, inside a filing cabinet, never even looked at until recently. No environmental stress whatsoever. So what happens a year from now? 2 years? Is your $5000 LCD TV from BestBuy receipt going to be there for you when you need it? It sure will be - as toilet paper. You can roll some smokes with it - you might as well, since you're out thousands of dollars. Poor man is better off dead.
Thermal printing is quickly ruined by obscure and strange things such as light, air or temperature. If you leave it cool, it fades. If you get it warm, the whole pages turns black. You know when you (stupidly) remove that delicious tomato from your Whopper and the grill slip that states tomato-delete is partially black? Because it touched your wrapped burger that is MAYBE 40 degrees Celsius? Yeah. How hot does it get in your car in the summer with your unused car wash vouchers in the glove box? Something to think about.
So my receipt isn't looking so good. What's next..?
I don't have to explain the above pic. You just got owned. I was going to show you a real one, but I threw them all out since I didn't need any firewood. I've been keeping gas receipts since I got my car in back in 2001. I went to look at them for reference, and most of them were completely blank. The only stuff I could make out at all was late 2004. Sure there are higher quality printers/paper that may last a little longer, but is your local store going to get them? Ha. Why would they? You're too dumb to figure our their scheme anyway. Luckily, some of us are of higher intelligence. Let's take the wayback machine and see how it used to be done:
Above is my receipt from me buying Sonic the Hedgehog 3 on November 18, 1994. You know how I know the date? BECAUSE I CAN FUCKING READ IT. Although not the clearest, it's over thirteen years old. Dot-matrix printing was truly designed for this purpose. I have receipts much older than this, and even more clear. They'll last until I decide to throw it away because my childhood may actually be lost.
So fuck thermal printing. Be wise! If you buy something expensive with a good warranty, be sure to photocopy the receipt and staple it along with the original. Make sure to ask the sales staff if photocopies are allowed and why they are fucking asswipes who want to steal your money. Get them to print you out one on regular paper, handwrite it (in blood), whatever. Show them this site, or the millions of Internet forums that mention this exact scenario. (I knew this years ago, don't pull that stealing ideas bullshit on me) Don't be a victim of technology.
Oh, and as for me being funny, I'll get back to that next time. I just wanted to get all of you a small gift first. Now you can safely buy that giant TV with extended warranty so you can play your shitty violent videogames and brag how yours is 2 inches bigger - around. Think about it.
<update> A few months after this article was published, I received an email from Jonathan Scott. The email was so intelligent, I had to attach it to this article. Here it is as follows:
"I thought I’d screw with your brain on warranties even more. I have a Masters Degree in Manufacturing and have worked in the electronics manufacturing industry for more than 10 years as an Engineer. Now here is the scam on extended warranties which you pay for.
You go to your friendly electronics store and pick up that 50inch plasma you’ve always wanted. The nerdy sales geek tells you all the features and gives you the price. Well it’s more than 3 months salary but it’s sure worth it for the total movie experience. After arguing over a price geek boy then entices you that since it’s such an expensive product he’s going to knock 10% off but only if you buy the extended 3 yr warranty. Hmmm. So you save $500 on the overall cost but only spent $150 on the warranty for 3 yrs more confidence that it’s not going to break…SOLD.
Lets look at something called the Bathtub curve, which is applied to failure rates for just about all high end goods.
The graph basically shows that failure rate is high soon after a product is manufactured (infant mortality). Many consumer goods are purposely designed to get past this point by either using components that are of extremely high quality ensuring reliability to beyond infant mortality or the whole product itself is aged or exercised prior to shipment. In the case of the latter, some manufacturers operate the product in the factory or in ovens or test rooms.
As infant morality tails off, the random failure rule applies. This is the portion of greatest reliability and it’s length is uncertain, but for most quality electronic products it is between 1 to 5 years. This is the point at which most manufacturer warranties end. The 1 yr free warranty takes the product to this point, eliminating random infant failures and ensuring the product has little risk of failure except for total random cause.
The third area in the graph indicates wear out failure, and is pretty self descriptive. As parts wear out failure rate increases.
The whole con is that extended warranties are within the middle section. When you pay for extended warranty you effectively pay the manufacturer for a free warranty because they don’t have to do anything extra to provide it. It is already been engineered to this safety. Therefore the extended warranty is a high profit, low risk action to the manufacturer or worse still to the distributor / seller.
Answer – don’t pay for extended warranties unless you really can’t raise the cash for a replacement item within the time period of the original warranty. In this case don’t go for more than 2 extra years, because the value of the item decreases for consumer goods at such a rate that for the same money in 3 years time the beneficial options of the latest model outweighs the investment.
Regards
Jonathan Scott"
