I've been on the other side: Dealing with returns and warranty claims at scale, albeit at a much larger company.
You're not alone. A lot of people will invest a lot of time into lying, playing dumb, making threats (think people with a lot of Twitter followers threatening to broadcast how terrible your company is unless you give them exactly what they want) and other manipulative tactics to abuse warranty claims.
Ultimately this is why we had to become more strict about warranty claims. When half of your warranty claims are coming from people angling for free upgrades or demanding full-price refunds after many years of service (some of whom tried to demand to keep the hardware and get a refund), you quickly become numb to it. I guess companies like Apple can absorb the lies for a while, but eventually you have to make a choice between padding your margins to cater to the warranty abusers or becoming more strict on warranty claims.
Apple understands something many retailers have lost. The way you deal with the customer when they’re not happy turns you into a lifetime customer. And if it doesn’t it’s a small price to pay.
Costco, Nordstrom, Marine Layer, etc.
To me this is a winning strategy. Even if it’s 1 in 5 or less.
If that one warranty-abusing user convinces 2-3 others to buy the same product and they don't abuse the warranty, the company is still making more money.
It comes down to margin. In a commodity business like Android phones or TVs the margins are razor thin. With a 10% profit margin you’d need to convince 10 other buyers just to break even on one fraudulent replacement. The real difference is Apple has some of the best profit margins in the industry.
The author's point is that he was careful and the request for warranty repair was not some abuse attempt. Of course deceitful demands for warranty should be declined.
Even Apple will not honor warranties in cases of obvious abuse and lies.
Yeah I remember one customer with multiple destroyed tv's (spilled beer or other moisture damage, panels had rust) getting them repaired on samsungs dime because they ware "the voice of the customer".
It was annoying, but we did bill samsung for all the work. :)
The blogs author might also like the fact that samsung owns their warranty repair infrastructure, they don't contract it out.
So less repairs means more profit. While contractors repair everything that is not obviously deliberate.
You're not alone. A lot of people will invest a lot of time into lying, playing dumb, making threats (think people with a lot of Twitter followers threatening to broadcast how terrible your company is unless you give them exactly what they want) and other manipulative tactics to abuse warranty claims.
Ultimately this is why we had to become more strict about warranty claims. When half of your warranty claims are coming from people angling for free upgrades or demanding full-price refunds after many years of service (some of whom tried to demand to keep the hardware and get a refund), you quickly become numb to it. I guess companies like Apple can absorb the lies for a while, but eventually you have to make a choice between padding your margins to cater to the warranty abusers or becoming more strict on warranty claims.