Lets assume you buy a vacuum cleaner (could be any product). Most people agree that the product should last 3 years (again could be any length) under normal use. Now the manufacture puts a limited 1 year warranty on it, sounds good. But they know from experience that the thing wont last more then 1 1/2 years even though most people would expect it to last 3 and pay a price based and that amount of usage. So needless to say product fails sooner they anyone but the manufacture expected and you are out your $$$. Now lets assume you write a check for the vacuum knowing the check wont clear the bank but hey it looks good right now. You could go to jail or have other legal sanctions against you. But you can’t do a thing to the manufacture. And lets not get into “but you stiffed ABC-Mart on the check and Acme is the one with the junky vacuum.” Just assume you bought the product directly from Acme. Why the difference aside from who at Acme do we throw in jail?
Keep smiling it makes 'em wonder what you’ve been up to.
Let me get this straight:
Person A gives Company B a promise to provide a certain amount of money (the check).
Person A does not fulfill this promise.
Company B gives Person A a promise to provide a product that will work for one year. Person A assumes that the product will work for 3 years.
Company B fulfills its promise, but not Person A’s expectations.
You really don’t see a difference between a promise agreed upon by both parties and an assumption made by one party?
That’s not what a warranty promises. The warranty promises that no manufacturing defect will prevent the product from working for one year (or 90 days in the case of most electronics). If the product fails for a reason unrelated to manufacturing defect there isn’t necessarily any breach of the sales contract.
Lucy, the three years is entirely in your head. The law isn’t interested in how long you think a vacuum cleaner should last. When you write a check you make an exact instrument - a specific promise of payment. If its a bad check, and you don’t meet or cancel the contract according to the requirements of the other party then what you have done is commit fraud.
Now, the manufacturer has not committed fraud unless one of their representatives tells you that the vacuum cleaner will last three years. Even then, it is probably not enforceable unless they put in writing. And as Otto says, what they put in writing is that the product will remain free from defects in manufacturing for 1 year (or whatever).
Of course, you don’t need a warranty to sue. You could take the manufacturer to small claims court. If you can convince the judge that they committed fraud or otherwise did not meet the terms of the agreement you can get your money back. I wouldn’t write any checks though expecting to have this money in the bank
I do see the difference between a check (a legal binding document) and my assumption that it should work for X number of years. A friend has been asking this to everyone they could so I put it here. Maybe this question is meant to be more ethically then legally. I think what is meant is that if you poll 100 people how long do you think a “Gizmo” should last and they all agree on a time frame of 3 years even though they have not been promised in writing that it will most people still expect to get a certain amount of value. So maybe he did mean in an ethical sense not legal but I haven’t had a chance to ask him. Also I think the assumption is that none of their “Gizmo’s” last that long not just the few that one can expect to happen but then they still didn’t promise them to just the public assumption based on other brands that they would. OH Heck now I’m confussed as to what he was going for :)But I still have some good answers for him.
Keep smiling it makes 'em wonder what you’ve been up to.
If a company really makes a lot of gizmos that are broken, a class action law suit is not out of the question. Remember that there is not really much to civil law except procedure, precedent and opinion. There doesn’t need to be a statute passed that says a company has to make a product that lasts three years - if you can show that the common definition of a ‘working product’ is one that lasts three years, perhaps you can win a settlement, I don’t know.
As far as your ethical question, well I don’t see how you can separate ethical and legal questions. It is unethical to break the law. If you live in a country, you implicitly and explicity agree to abide by its rules. This is a moral choice. For more on this, see Plato’s ‘Crito’ (Socrates’ explanation of why he must stay in Athens and accept the unjust sentence of death). So writing a bad check is right out. I think it is also unethical for a company to intentionally manufacture a product which they know to be faulty - however the two issues are not really in the same league. The manufacturer’s problem is more likely to be due to incompetence than anything else - their engineers couldn’t meet a deadline but they shipped the product anyway, that sort of thing. If you’ve worked in a large corporation, you know how hopelessly mired in stupid crap it all is - its not really anyones’ fault its just a rotten thing. The best you can really hope for is that word gets around, no one buys their products and they go out of business. Hey, it almost happened to Chrysler!
