I don't value warranties as they exist now. Besides the fine print and the overhead, they're almost all non-transferable. That's a joke to me. Buy a used Hyundai and you'll get the balance of that 60,000 mile warranty. Spend the same money on a used Specialized (or Enve, or nearly every other brand, "premium" or not), and you can go pound sand.
To me, you either stand behind your product or you don't. The original owner already paid you for the warranty; if you negate that support when the product changes hands ten minutes later, you're treating that compensation like a windfall. One more liability to strike from the balance sheet! Hooray for you. But if that product breaks from an engineering or manufacturing defect, you can bet I'll be crowing about it in forums like this, and there won't be any "and they stepped in to make this right" to offset the bad taste.
That aside, most MTB products don't have "lifetime" utility. My first dropper was 150mm and $400. I replaced it two years later with a $300 185mm dropper, and that one will be replaced with a 200mm as soon as my next frame becomes available. An extended warranty on an obsolete product or one likely to rapidly drop in price just isn't that interesting. The warranty is mostly relevant to deal with infant deaths that occur in the first two years when I'm not eying a replacement for other reasons.
For a customer-focused company, though, I'd say 7 years is the right span, few or no questions asked. And if someone contacts you about your thing from a decade ago and you make an exception here and there, they'll praise you to the heavens.
Feb. 9, 2021, 10:49 a.m. - Alex D
I don't value warranties as they exist now. Besides the fine print and the overhead, they're almost all non-transferable. That's a joke to me. Buy a used Hyundai and you'll get the balance of that 60,000 mile warranty. Spend the same money on a used Specialized (or Enve, or nearly every other brand, "premium" or not), and you can go pound sand. To me, you either stand behind your product or you don't. The original owner already paid you for the warranty; if you negate that support when the product changes hands ten minutes later, you're treating that compensation like a windfall. One more liability to strike from the balance sheet! Hooray for you. But if that product breaks from an engineering or manufacturing defect, you can bet I'll be crowing about it in forums like this, and there won't be any "and they stepped in to make this right" to offset the bad taste. That aside, most MTB products don't have "lifetime" utility. My first dropper was 150mm and $400. I replaced it two years later with a $300 185mm dropper, and that one will be replaced with a 200mm as soon as my next frame becomes available. An extended warranty on an obsolete product or one likely to rapidly drop in price just isn't that interesting. The warranty is mostly relevant to deal with infant deaths that occur in the first two years when I'm not eying a replacement for other reasons. For a customer-focused company, though, I'd say 7 years is the right span, few or no questions asked. And if someone contacts you about your thing from a decade ago and you make an exception here and there, they'll praise you to the heavens.