Changes to the warranty conditions on the horizon?
American Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has sent warning letters to three major producers of the video game consoles, i.e. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, to change the content of the warranties. These computer games producers made the validity of the warranty for the computer game consoles conditional upon repairs being made exclusively by particular providers or upon the guarantee stickers not being removed.
In order to keep the guarantee valid, the consumers had to have repairs done by the provider determined by the producer. Otherwise, the guarantee for the video game console became void. The consumers could not even clean the game console from the inside without the guarantee becoming void, because the cleaning required removal of the guarantee sticker. FTC labelled both conditions as inappropriate and requested that companies change their warranties.
In Slovenia, the Slovenian Competition Protection Agency, for example, requested similar action from Hyundai Avto Trade d.o.o. (HAT) in its Decision no. 3062-2/2014-83 . HAT made the factory warranty conditional on the performance of regular and maintenance work that was not covered by the warranty by Hyundai authorised repairers and on the use of the original spare parts of the Hyundai brand supplied by HAT, including the replacement of the parts for which the warranty did not apply. By adopting a commitment decision, HAT undertook that the warranty will apply regardless of whether the vehicle was maintained by an authorised or independent repairer, and regardless of whether original parts or non-original replacement parts of the same quality were built into the vehicle.
