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Comment by danielrhodes | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of when I went in to a Patagonia store to repair a jacket with a “lifetime” warranty. Turns out they define lifetime as the “useful” lifetime of the product, which is a couple years. They refused to help and instead tried to sell me a new jacket.

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You should definitely try a different store or employee. I’ve heard nothing but great things about the patagonia lifetime warranty.

I forget who owns Black Diamond, but they're kind of similar.

They haven't fully replaced the product, but what is cool is that they have a repair shop that has been doing free repairs for me. I've sent a very lightweight, very heavily used puffy jacket in twice for repairs at no charge.

Realistically I know that jacket isn't going to last forever, but I respect they are at least trying to help me extract as much life out of it as I can from a sustainability perspective.

Both companies were founded by Yvon Chouinard

It's using less material and less landfill, but I wonder if it really is more sustainable in the grand scheme of things, at the scale of clothing and similarly sized items. The additional round trip shipping and workshop operations (HVAC, lighting, commuting, etc.) could potentially exceed the footprint of just sending you a replacement right off the production line. Obviously there's a crossover point above which this couldn't possibly be (cars, etc.) but it's probably a very blurry line, and I wouldn't be surprised if some companies knowingly take the worse but ostensibly sustainable option, i.e. greenwashing, for the resulting brand loyalty and word of mouth advertising.

You mean HVAC, lighting, shipping (half across the globe probably) isn't involved in purchasing a new thing?

It absolutely is, but [using it for production of new items and using it for a repair shop] might take more resources than [just having the former and supplying some replacements]. What I'm saying is that we can't just compare consumption/waste of materials (which is obviously worse when doing replacement instead of repair) because there are also "overhead" resources required in order to offer repairs. Theoretically, in cases where replacements are better for the bottom line than repairs, it's due to using fewer resources, and the open question is how "green or dirty" those resources are.

If replacement is cheaper only because of geographic differences in wages, then we ought to repair. But if replacement is cheaper because of streamlining the use of nonrenewable electricity and so forth, then we ought to replace.

Prefacing saying this is just my experience.

I sent back a down jacket which weighed practically nothing and packed down extremely small. However, harvesting the down is somewhat controversial and only recently has there been a movement to use ethically-sourced down feathers (I haven’t looked into the RDS standard. I’m sure it has problems, but hey, it’s a step in the right direction).

For normal fabric clothing, I think you are probably right. I do feel like the roundtrip in this case was worth it to get the most usage out of the feathers as possible (not to mention the 1000+ fill jackets like this are expensive).

Darn tough socks still honor their lifetime warranty no matter how long passes, though obviously no socks can last forever. Generally reading online you find people mentioning you should be reasonable about it.

Tilley hats as well. It was probably twenty years on, and both of ours fell apart enough to call about their lifetime (“put it in your will!”) warranty. Other than arguing that Tilley never made that model of hat, they sent us an equivalent without fuss.

> you should be reasonable about it.

I don't get it. Shouldn't it be the seller's obligation to give a reasonable lifetime estimate? Like, give me a five year warranty, if you want to advertise your socks last for five years of regular use. Don't pretend it's unlimited when it isn't.

buncha people caught wind and purchase the product used/torn for pennies on the dollar, and send it in, in order to take advantage of the offer (and the retailer).

Statement still stands. The company can't afford lifetime because of this possibility. They should change the terms. They could say single owner lifetime or something like that.

>Shouldn't it be the seller's obligation to give a reasonable lifetime estimate?

Not sure how you define this or maintain it. These socks are guaranteed for 100 wears? Can't count wears. These socks last a year. Is that daily wear? One of 10 pairs? Only air dried? Was the user running daily marathons?

You can extend this to pretty much every product.

>last for five years of regular use.

What's regular use?

By that standard we would have "lifetime" warranty on everything sold in The Nederlands, since by law we require warranty as long as you can reasonably expect a product to last.

My Tomtom GPS is like this. I have an older model. "Lifetime maps". For many years, plug it in, new map, download done.

Eventually I try to update it and it says "oh no, do you want to buy a map!?". I mean. What? Doesn't even cost anything to the company to keep on giving me free maps - well I guess it's lost revenue if that they could earn by dishonoring the agreement, which is what they did. Clearly meant to extract more money from me in map purchase or to buy another "lifetime" map.

I have another TomTom on my other vehicle (despite the shitty practices, their kit doesn't randomly crash like Garmin in my experience) which about every 2 days nags me about an update. So here I am, newer model is way too aggressive with updates all the time, old "lifetime map" model is a disaster.

What it is here, is there needs to be legislation that if a company uses "lifetime" or equivalent word in marketing, they are on the hook for life to honor that, with some prescribed action to make customers whole if they should want to drop it.

Now a good guy legend in this field, craftsman tools, for many decades in america people would buy craftsman from their sears knowing they could always go back easily and get a replacement. Sears in the day was like if Wal mart and amazon was the same company. An institution.

I had nearly the opposite experience, getting a jacket of over 20 years replaced after I brought it in. You should go back and try again.

Hmm that doesn't sound right. I just got a 10 year old jacket which had damage I had caused (so not normal wear and tear) for free

The warranty is for the lifetime of the product. If it breaks, obviously its lifetime has ended so the warranty is no longer in effect...

Indeed, a reasonable person would find that its usefulness has tanked!

Yeah this is odd.

I've taken multiple 10 year old T-Shirts with holes through 10% of them in to the Patagonia store and they've let me walk out with new product off the rack.

I wonder if you'd have luck in small claims court.

This is how I got MSI to honour their warranty in spite of their stance that any failure at all is due to user error, since their products don't fail

Wow, nice. Did they show up? Did they settle?

Settled at the eleventh hour

I have the opposite experience with warranty.

I had a defective ATX psu cable and MSI support sent me a whole cables kit overnight. And recently a bought a Corsair case, the iCue controller had 2 defective ports and Corsair also sent me a replacement overnight.

My only "trick" with support is telling them upfront that I will leave a 5 stars review on amazon uppon successful resolution of the problem.

LL Bean are the OG of this, and they will warranty stuff that is 25 years old without batting an eye

Not anymore. I had a pair of boots that one of the soles fell off of one day. They were about 20 years old but still in good shape except for the glue failure. I called up LL Bean and they said they had no record of the purchase (I didn’t have a receipt but I bought them directly from them). After I insisted I had bought from them they changed their tune to saying 20 years is long enough and I should know that glue on the soles of shoes fails after a while. I just wanted them to repair the boots but they refused, so I won’t be buying anything from them anymore.

this may be one of the most entitled comments ive ever read on this website.

Here was their old guarantee: "Our products are guaranteed to give 100% satisfaction in every way. Return anything purchased from us at any time if it proves otherwise. We do not want you to have anything from L.L. Bean that is not completely satisfactory."

Are you not satisfied by boots which lasted 20 years?

If they had just worn out, that's fine, but they weren't at all. I only use them maybe 5-10 times per year, so the sole still had tons of life in it. The problem is that they didn't sew the sole onto the boot upper and the glue they used just lets go after a while.

I don't think that the soles should just fall off your boots one day while you're hiking, so no, I was not completely satisfied and I would like them to glue the soles back on for me.

Interesting. Do you remember if the boots were LL Bean brand name?

I'm sad to hear the bulletproof policy has come to an end.

Yes they were Bean Cresta Hikers. I really liked them.

Does Zippo predate that?

I think Leatherman have a similar warranty to Zippo, and they've been around a while, too.

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