New Ebay scam

This is my first negative experience with this "authorized reseller" situation and I must say that in the future it will only serve to hurt the manufacturer because now I will buy used off places like Ebay if the manufacturer sports statements like Escort has. What the hell, I'm going to have to pay if it needs any service anyhow so I might as well pay a lot less to start with.

I'm sure revenues from that reseller went to the manufacturer, unless this is a very elaborate counterfeit, so the manufacturer has benefited from the sale and is now double dipping by charging for a warranty that the unit has. Sales of used equipment are of no benefit to the manufacturer as they derive no revenues from it. Even if they told me the unit was counterfeit and as such that they are charging me $50 for the repair I would have little complaint with Escort. My attention would be focused on the reseller for selling me bogus goods that were bought in good faith as genuine articles.

Whoever said "ignorance is bliss" was wrong. It's frustrating.

I hope those that viewed this issue are a bit wiser now and the final chapter on this issue with Escort hasn't been written yet. I still need to get in touch with someone other than the service writer who is following company policy.

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Buzz in San Diego

It appears as if you could have checked the warranty ahead of time. Ever see those radar detectors at your local dealer? Nope, 'cuz they don't have local dealers. Caveat Emptor ... was violated, and all you can do is bad-mouth the manufacturer!!
Ken
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http://www.ahomls.com/gallery.htm
Voted Best of the City 2004 by Cincinnati Magazine
I don't believe in fate, but I do believe in f/8!

What's this "Phil please yank this thread" nonsense, Krusadr? You started down this road with all this lawbreaking and speeding stuff. I placed this in the Open Talk forum because of the generality of the issue concerning a product, whatever that product may be, and you deflected it into a Troll rant about speeding!

Stick to positively addressing issues and you won't need to whine to Phil about yanking posts. Others seem to do it quite nicely.
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Buzz in San Diego

Ken Phillips said:

It appears as if you could have checked the warranty ahead of time.
Ever see those radar detectors at your local dealer? Nope, 'cuz
they don't have local dealers. Caveat Emptor ... was violated, and
all you can do is bad-mouth the manufacturer!!
Ken

Click to expand...

You're absolutely right Ken. The next time I consider buying anything new I"ll thoroughly investigate the warranty, along with any and all disclaimers, to see if the manufacturer is going to try to put it to me.

Looks like I'll probably never buy anything new again without a lawyer looking over the warranty.
It isn't like I bought this off the street in a brown paper bag to $20.

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Buzz in San Diego

At least, unless you buy from a dealer. If you buy a Canon camera from other than an authorized dealer, you get no warranty. That's a common practice ... and you SHOULD check warranties on stuff with any value, ahead of time.

Now, if the eBay ad states that it's under warranty, you have remedy, but NOT with the mfg or eBay. You are simply going after the wrong entity ...
Ken

--



http://www.ahomls.com/gallery.htm
Voted Best of the City 2004 by Cincinnati Magazine
I don't believe in fate, but I do believe in f/8!

I just bought a 1 GIG Comapct Flash Ultra II card from ebay. It was NEW and sealed. I do not know if the reseller was "authorized", but I decided to read the warranty info. The Sandisk Ultra II cards have a lifetime warranty, however, in the print, they claim that proof of purchase from authorized reseller MAY be required. I guess it all depends on how long its been. If 4 years from now, the CF card fails, they cannot really expect you to provide a receipt (or could they?)

That is the beauty of LIFETIME warranties. It is just too much of a hassle to keep your receipt for the rest of your life.

Also, in the warranty info, it states that the ORIGINAL owner is the only one capable of using the warranty. Any secondary owners are SOL.

So even with Sandisk compact flash cards, the item MUST BE PURCHASED FROM AN AUTHORIZED DEALER.

E1derful said:

I just bought a 1 GIG Comapct Flash Ultra II card from ebay. It
was NEW and sealed. I do not know if the reseller was
"authorized", but I decided to read the warranty info. The Sandisk
Ultra II cards have a lifetime warranty, however, in the print,
they claim that proof of purchase from authorized reseller MAY be
required. I guess it all depends on how long its been. If 4 years
from now, the CF card fails, they cannot really expect you to
provide a receipt (or could they?)

That is the beauty of LIFETIME warranties. It is just too much of
a hassle to keep your receipt for the rest of your life.

Also, in the warranty info, it states that the ORIGINAL owner is
the only one capable of using the warranty. Any secondary owners
are SOL.

So even with Sandisk compact flash cards, the item MUST BE
PURCHASED FROM AN AUTHORIZED DEALER.

Click to expand...

Well that bites. So if you buy it from an authorized dealer and give it as a gift to someone then they can tell you "Sorry Charlie, no good. You're not the original owner."

It also begs the question of what you registered the product for, other than to be put on a mailing list.

I guess LIFETIME means for the lifetime of the receipt, not the product.

HEY!! I just pulled the warranty info out of a Motorola cable modem I bought and has this stinkin' authorized reseller clause in it as well. My god, it's a cancer in the industry!

In retrospect, this whole "authorized dealer" issue could have value as a class action suit against the manufacturer(s). How many people read a warranty BEFORE they buy the product. I would venture to say none to not many. The warranty is normally only included in the box after the purchase. So you never know what you're buying into until after you bought into it and then it's too late. The hook is set. You just mumble to yourself about hoping nothing goes wrong during the warranty period and go about your business.

I think the press may be interested in this as a news story as well. This is a consumer issue that needs to be brought out into the light. I wonder if a news magazine like 20/20 might smell some viewer interest in this?
--
Buzz in San Diego

RickS said:

Absolute malarky, actually.

While speed is certainly an element of many accidents, other
factors usually offer a much greater influence, and may cause the
speeding. It's just convenient to quantify it (speed) with our
advanced technology and assign blame. In reality, it's
often/usually alcohol that's involved, following too closely or
other aggressive driving action, and/or just plain innattention.

If you want to prevent accidents, curb those other behaviors.

I'd much rather be going down the road at 80 mph with a car 150
feet behind me than at 35 mph with a car 10 feet behind me.

Rick

Click to expand...

Malarky is right. If a drunk kills someone and he was exceeding the speed limit than excessive speed is noted on an accident report as one of the factors. Any traffic accident that involves someone who was speeding will have excessive speed noted as one of the causes even if it was not the reason for the accident. It's a shell game and the auto insurance industry is a big part of it. All those speeding tickets result in more revenue for muninciplaties and for insurance carriers when they raise your rates.

If I'm driving safely at a speed of 70 pmh at 2:00 am on the LIE and I pass one of the many Suffolk County Highway Patrol officers and get caught, my insurance rates will climb. It is automatically assumed that driving over the speed limit makes ne an unsafe driver. It's funny, I live amongst quite a few police officers, including highway patrol and they don't obey the speed limits - they don't have to since they are immune from receiving tickets unlike the rest of us who pay their very high salaries.
--
My humble photo gallery: http://ntotrr.smugmug.com

krusadr said:

and you won't need a radar detector. Do you break other laws too?
Are you aware that most motor vehicle accidents resulting in
fatalities involve excess speed?

Click to expand...

3% of accidents are caused by speed in excess of the posted limit.

Most "speed related" accidents are due to driving too fast for the conditions. These still only account for 7%

Most accidents are caused by driver inattention. One cause of driver inattention is looking for speed traps.

krusadr said:

Sorry, are you saying that the radar detector going off helps him
slow down? What if there is no radar trap, does he just keep on
speeding?

Click to expand...

The trouble is krusadr you take life too seriously. An intelligent driver (I hope you are one) constantly monitors the road conditions and drives accordingly. A few years ago I was driving along a very quiet country road on a Sunday morning doing 70 kph in a 60 kph limit. I was 'caught' by a radar trap hidden behind the bushes and received a heavy fine. No other cars were to be seen. Had I a radar detector in my car I could have slowed down before the trap, thus saving lives and terrible injury, and then sped up again afterwards (risking, of course mowing down all those pedestrians and colliding with that stream of on-coming cars on that country road on a Sunday morning). You, of course, would have obeyed the speed limit all the way and saved even more lives.

krusadr said:

This thread as it is bringing out some very strange arguments in
favour of antisocial behaviour with people granting kudos for
dangerous and illigal behaviour not to mention perverting the
course of justice which is exactly what radar detectors do.

Click to expand...

You have no idea what the 'illigal behaviour' [sic] is, do you? Not murder or burglary, I think, but trivial breaches of the law such as speeding on empty roads. What do you do if a set of traffic lights gets stuck on red? Sit there until the lights are repaired?

I own a use a radar detector, I rarely speed,I really do not want to incur high rates or cancellation of my Insurance..I just like to know when I'm being monitored by authorities....

http://www.pbase.com/wbrosen/

I said (nt)!

krusadr said:

and you won't need a radar detector. Do you break other laws too?
Are you aware that most motor vehicle accidents resulting in
fatalities involve excess speed? Have you ever lost someone close
to an idiot driver? Have you ever attended an accident and
wittnessed the death of a person due to speeding?

Sorry, can't feel sorry for you on this one. The "hoisted by ones
own petards" saying springs to mind. Now if this had been a camera
then I'd sympathise.

Click to expand...

Interesting then that the accident rate of those that use radar detectors are significantly lower than those that do not.

Ever cheated on your taxes Krusadr? You've never, ever exceeded the speed limit either? Never broken any law?

You are a dickhead...

At last some sense.

Buzz Bussino said:

Well that bites. So if you buy it from an authorized dealer and
give it as a gift to someone then they can tell you "Sorry Charlie,
no good. You're not the original owner."
It also begs the question of what you registered the product for,
other than to be put on a mailing list.

Click to expand...

To be put on the mailing list and every other mailing list associated with the product.. A mailing list, I might add, that they made money from selling.. Ever buy and register a product and then get a mailbox full of offers for extended warrenties??

Buzz Bussino said:

I guess LIFETIME means for the lifetime of the receipt, not the
product.

Click to expand...

Assuming the company is still in business, under the name you originally purchased the item...

Buzz Bussino said:

HEY!! I just pulled the warranty info out of a Motorola cable modem
I bought and has this stinkin' authorized reseller clause in it as
well. My god, it's a cancer in the industry!

Click to expand...

They all do it.. Is it right?? Depends on who you ask.. The consumer says no, the industry says yes. Check the warrenty on your camera.. Authorized dealer??

Buzz Bussino said:

In retrospect, this whole "authorized dealer" issue could have
value as a class action suit against the manufacturer(s). How many
people read a warranty BEFORE they buy the product. I would venture
to say none to not many.

Click to expand...

The first time I ever came across this, I wanted to buy a Yamaha reciever amplifier.. Looked on ebay for a bargain and found one that said 3 year warrenty.. Not believing everything I read, Went to the Yamaha website to find that in order to validate the warrenty, MUST be purchased in country it was intended for AND from an authorized dealer.. Wrote the seller, USA seller (covered that part), but NOT an authorized dealer. Hence, No warrenty.. Move on.. Ever hear of Gray market?? Buy a gray market camera and try to get it serviced in the USA by a repair center.. Same camera, same features, same color size and smell.. They don't have to service it and you may end up sending it to the manuafacturer.. So yes, in my case, I ALWAYS check the warrenty before purchasing. Didn't always but do now.

The warranty is normally only included in

Buzz Bussino said:

the box after the purchase. So you never know what you're buying
into until after you bought into it and then it's too late. The
hook is set. You just mumble to yourself about hoping nothing goes
wrong during the warranty period and go about your business.

I think the press may be interested in this as a news story as
well. This is a consumer issue that needs to be brought out into
the light. I wonder if a news magazine like 20/20 might smell some
viewer interest in this?
--
Buzz in San Diego

Click to expand...

I don't know what your hurry is but good luck with your fuzz buster. That is, until big brother has those cameras snapping license plates and sending speeding tickets through the mail....

Jeff

--
http://photobucket.com/albums/v285/jjmel
Pana FZ-2O, Ph0t0-sh0p Cee-ES, and too much other stuff to list.

" HELP " how do you post ?.

JeffJS said:

I don't know what your hurry is but good luck with your fuzz
buster. That is, until big brother has those cameras snapping
license plates and sending speeding tickets through the mail....

Click to expand...

I've been snapped once by them...but never again will they get me....unless I am not paing attention.

In my city, they use large white vans with blue stripes on the side to take those images. Easy to spot once you know what to look for. My first ticket was 2 days after Christmas...which was only a month or so after the program started in my area...

Now that I know about the new system, I doubt I will be it's victim in the future.

They do not use radar or laser to determine speed. I forgot what they claim to use as a speed determination device. It may be as simple as the distance traveled over a specific time...

The law enforcement officers I know tell a slightly different story.

According to them, people that use radar detectors are also doing something else - paying attention to their driving. They aren't usually gabbing on the cell phone, stuffing their face, or otherwise mistaking an automobile moving at 70mph for a living room in their house.

Statistically, radar detectors aren't associated with higher accident rates. I won't go so far as to say that they stop accidents, it's more a symptom of an alert driver.

As for trashing this thread because it has nothing to do with photography, I couldn't agree more.

EBay is nothing more than a large garage sale allowing common people to sell anything to everyone. However, as most are saying. Warrenties are only good for the original owner with a sales reciept for proof of purchase. This helps to prevent them from fraud and thus us from increase costs due to fraud. So, if you buy from EBay it is safe to assume that no warrenty applies and you are risking it.

EBay is great for saving a buck, but they are USED goods for the most part. Some stores use EBay to move overstock, but at least with them you will get a "real" sales reciept.

--
DaFlake

in regards to the warranty coverage, while i can see why they say and do what they do, i feel they should still have some sort of safeguard for valid customers, ebay can be used for some shady business, but if someone makes a dollar selling a legitimate factory sealed product, and the person who purchased that product has valid proof of purchase, and may have even registered the products serial number in their name, in the name of good business they should be extended a hand and helped when said product fails/needs repair under coverage terms.

now onto the whole speeding rant, firstly let me say that "krusadr" is no doubt one of the "older" citizens of this great country... now not to alienate any "experienced" members of this community i say ahead of time that i do not assume that all people above the age of 50 are afraid of life at every turn and love to clog our nations roadways.

i will however take this time to express my OPINION(stressed for the flamewar that will no doubt follow this post).

as a 23 year old (yes 23, yes i'm young, but have experience with NUMEROUS people in my immediate life of a later age who feel the same, all ranging from 30-55) male who originally grew up in rural pennsylvania, lived in NYC for some time, and now live in the greater harrisburg area of pennsylvania, i'd like to say that outside of rural neighborhoods (where i am EXTREMELY cautious of children/pedestrians as i have had in family death due to drivers not paying attention) people who drive the speed limit SUCK, and are the main reason for roadway conjestion, road rage, and accidents... who do you think the speeders are hitting when they cause said accidents, the people who refuse to stop sight-seeing the farms and such and driving 40 in a 55.

did you ever notice how when youre on a highway krusadr, everyone and thier mother no doubt is flying by you at "excessive" speeds relative to yours, including no doubt mini-vans/tractor trailers/and sports cars alike.. its called following the flow of traffic, which on the majority of highways is roughly 85 in a 65, and 80 in a 55. and rightly so, on direct roads in dry conditions if everyone is maintaining a decent distance between cars you better believe thats what we're going to do.

its people that think they should brake on on-ramps (when the true intent of an onramp is to ACCELERATE to the speed of traffic so you can merge easily, not stop and try to merge with 70mph traffic going 15mph... lord help me i hate those people) or people who dont realize that by passing a truck doing 60, and youre doing 62... you are in effect causing a rolling roadblock for all the cars behind you, or better yet drive directly side by side for an 8 mile stretch because youre not "pressured" by someone 3 inches off of your bumper while traffic builds up...

its you slow driving people that have the non moving traffic every day comming home from work, because youre too afraid to push on the gas pedal and instead have someone who DOES want to get home and see their family slam on their brakes when they realize your not moving, which has a cascading effect of everyone else slamming on their breaks and in no time turns into a 10 mile backup of barely moving traffic, all because YOU are not confident enough in yoru driving to mildly exceed the speed limit.

yes people who weave through the lanes uncontrollably at 100+ mph are crazy and deserve a ticket, no people who drive 80 are not crazy and if you dont like it either stay in the right lane where you belong in your "sheople" line that is so moderated by feer and incompetence at the use of a motor vehicle or stay off the roads.

[ rant]

p.s.-for people wondering what "sheople" is its a combination of sheep and people that i have no idea of the origination, but its basically when you see a 2 lane road where the left lane is completely clear and theres a line of like 12 cars bumper to bumper because theyre all afraid to touch that crazy thing called a gas pedal to get out of that line being led by one of their own. and thank you for making me write a DISGUSTINGLY long post in an irrelavent thread that well exceeds what anyone should take the time to read on a monday.