Commercial warranty
A warranty is any obligation that a company assumes towards consumers and by means of which it undertakes to repair or replace goods for consumers free of charge, reimburse the purchase price, or provide any other remedy, when goods fail to function properly or do not have the properties specified in the warranty certificate or advertisement.
If consumers also received a warranty from the seller or manufacturer, but the product does not function properly and does not have the properties specified in the warranty certificate or advertisement, consumers shall have the option of enforcing their rights related to this as well. Such a warranty cannot interfere with the rights that consumers hold based on legislation, but they may upgrade them. Therefore, a warranty can benefit consumers if: its validity exceeds the legal guarantee (more than 2 years), consumers are not required to prove the existence of a defect (in particular, when six months have past since the purchase), a company offers a substitute product during the period of repair, complaint procedures are clear and simple, consumers are not required to organise the return of a defective product, all costs related to the inspection of a product, its repair, or replacement with a new product are borne by the company, the company immediately offers a new product, without first attempting to repair the defected one. A warranty is especially useful when consumers can also enforce it in the event of damaged goods due to an accident or due to their improper use.
It is becoming more frequent for companies to also offer extended or additional warranties in return for payment. These are special services that provide consumers with some rights in a particular time period if a product malfunctions or if any circumstances occur that are covered by such warranties. In such cases, this is not considered to be a warranty as stipulated in the provisions of the Consumer Protection Act. Companies fully determine the rights of consumers in the general terms and conditions of the payable warranty, which means that, if consumers enforce their rights based on such warranties, they may only enforce claims specified in the general terms and conditions (often, this only includes repair of the product), but not claims set forth by the mandatory statutory guarantee. Moreover, the statutory deadlines for resolving complaints do not apply. Therefore, it is worth making sure in advance what the extended warranty includes and verifying whether it at least includes some of the above advantages. In this case, such warranties may indeed benefit consumers.