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Comment by sonofhans | Hacker News Reader

An important side note is that Cooler Master’s “10-year Warranty” is garbage:

> I looked at Cooler Master’s warranty, and for issues within the first two years you have to deal with the retailer. That would be Amazon in my case. So I looked at Amazon’s information on warranty issues. Their policy is that if it’s more than 30 days since purchase, you have to send it off to a third-party repair center and wait for them to diagnose and try to repair it. Here’s the kicker: Usually repairs take up to 20 business days (including delivery time), but could take slightly longer

Everyone knows electronic devices tend to die early or last forever. Cooler Master and Amazon are working a shitty dodge here, and I bet they avoid most DOA warranty claims because of it.

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I ran into this same setup with a microwave that failed in a few months after purchase and Walmart.

Tried to deal with the manufacturer, but they couldn’t help and sent me to the retailer.

Went to the store, popped it up on the counter, had a short conversation and got the expected “you have to deal with the manufacturer”.

Is there anything else I can help you with today?

Actually yes. Can you throw that out for me?

The confusion on the guy’s face was great.

Spent more than enough time on the $100 microwave. Their problem now.

My experience with cheap modern microwave failures has been the door sensor failing, which for safety ofc prevents the magnetron from running. I had one fail in about 2 months, thankfully fixable with a $10 sensor and 15 minute of work. Same goes for a lot of appliances, repaired a dryer that had its door sensor fail (in fact, they all tend to use identical door sensors as far as I've seen, dryers and washing machines and microwaves).

My personal experience with a modern microwave (they mostly seem to be the same design internally, coming from the same chassis with the same electronics just a different button panel) was that the internal light bulb blowing generated a surge (it was a mains voltage bulb) that wasn't fused so the next nearest thing in the mains circuit was a trace on the motherboard that vaporized.

There is no way of easily changing this bulb (inside the main casing with no access panel for the bulb) so for want of a single in-line fuse, the entire microwave was rendered scrap[0] by the lifetime of a light bulb.

[0] - Except for the fact that I care not for electrical safety "DO NOT OPEN" warnings of doom due to being actually competent with handling high voltage equipment and being able to do a board level repair on the burned out trace without touching the very large capacitors associated with the very high voltage side controlling the magnetron...

In Europe, it actually matches the law, it is actually better.

- You have a 14 days retraction period, where you can send back the item and get your money back, defect or not. Amazon gives you 30 days and free return shipping.

- Legal warranty is 2 years and is provided by the seller, not the manufacturer. It is Amazon in this case, but it could be a brick and mortar shop or any other seller, including independent sellers. And they have to solve your problem within 30 days (repair, refund, replacement, ...). How to deal with the manufacturer is their problem. Amazon here is perfectly in line with the law.

- Manufacturer warranty and commercial warranty comes in addition to the legal warranty is whatever is written in the contract.

So here, the manufacturer doesn't need to provide warranty directly to the consumer for the first 2 years as the legal warranty covers it. And I am pretty sure that the 8 extra years offered by Cooler Master are even worse than what Amazon offers. For example, they may require you to pay for return shipping and wait even longer. There may be some fine print there too.

Similar in Norway, though not it's only for production defects and not expected wear and tear from regular use, or misuse etc.

However it's on the seller to prove it was not a production defect if they don't want to fix or refund.

Back when CD burners kept getting faster and faster my buddy bought a 4x writer and ended up with a 52x writer as they kept breaking down after 12-18 months. IIRC he went through four or five before getting the 52x which lasted.

Same in the UK, 2 years is the legal minimum for all electronic goods and no contract can be written to override that. If it uses electricity in any way, it must last 2 years.

It helps prevent ewaste.

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