Recently, some in-house warranty customers have been asking me if the economy has reduced volume. Right off the bat, I realized that in the majority of these calls this does not currently affect me because in terms of the computers I usually work on, I’m somewhat living in the past.
In other words, when it comes to making a claim on an extended warranty, in most cases, one year has already passed, otherwise the service claim would be made with the manufacturer.
Secondly, I think you can just add-in the factor that computer faliures are going to be rare during the first few years of a computer if it’s maintained correctly.
So what’s interesting to me is what is going to happen in the next 2-3 years–will volume drop off? If people are even buying computers as of this writing (I don’t know one way or the other), are they skipping on the extended warranty?
Or is it the other way around? Maybe this is the time to invest the additional cost for some assurance that in the future, especially if parts and/or labor costs rise, it will be taken care of.
Or perhaps this is a benefit to non-warranty work, in that in this future timeframe customers will have to make a decision similar to that of a used car. Spend some money to fix their exising unit, or invest in a new one.
I’m sure warranty companies will know during these trying times what future trends may hold, but I doubt if this will trickle down to field technicians as to what kind of volume to expect.