today's rant: scratch and dent

I worked for Samsung for all of 5 months.  The best thing that came out of my time there was that I gained enough knowledge to justify buying a new washing machine when I discovered a leak in my old one.  I knew enough to estimate the cost of repairs if I hired somebody or how much work and time lost there would be if I tried to fix it myself.  The ultimate deciding factor was that I saw mold forming where water was leaking.  That was all it took.  I couldn’t guess where else the mold was spreading, so the most prudent option was to get a new washing machine.  It would have been an expensive repair anyway.  The simplest choice was to toss the fucker.  The 2^nd best thing that came out of working there was visiting the corporate headquarters and hearing that they refer to the security guards at their mobile phone building as “The Guardians of the Galaxy”.  I appreciate a sense of humor.

If you see something or hear a salesperson say that something comes with a limited warranty when buying an appliance, this is misleading terminology.  The misleading is intended.  It is not like you are buying an appliance and you are getting a limited warranty for free on top of it.  The truth is that the warranty is factored into the price of the appliance.  As evidence of this, I direct you to the scratch and dent section.  Chances are good that an appliance is half off the original price of the appliance (note:  I said “original” price, not the sale price.  At an appliance store, I seriously doubt they ever sell for the “original” price).  So, if a washing machine’s original price is $1,000, the scratch price will probably be around $500, sold as is.  Know why it is “sold as is”?  It is because the store has already filed a complaint against the manufacturer about the scratch and got the entire price of the appliance back already.  It would cost too much to bring the unit back to Asia or wherever it came from, so they just let them keep it.  However, since the store got their money back, this voids the warranty.  So that $500 price tag is pretty much all profit for the store.  Getting back to the beginning of the paragraph, most of the time, the limited warranty is expired by the time a malfunction comes around.  Therefore, you unknowingly pay for the limited warranty for no good reason.  Enter the stores who offer you their extended warranty that THEY profit from.  Juggle that risk if you want, but the longer that appliance runs, the risk for malfunction goes up exponentially.  I’ve see the charts and I’ve seen the math.  You don’t fuck with charts and math… unless you are Enron or their accountants, and look what happened to them.