Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/03/04

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Subject: [Leica] Warranty survey.
From: Henry Ting <henryting10@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 09:51:47 -0800 (PST)

I have a lawyer friend who is currently looking into
the legality of warranty issues. He specializes in
international business law and is currently
undertaking quite a bit of EU (European consortium)
trade issues that applies to warranty. Evidently,
warranty practice between the U.S. agencies and other
foreign agencies are very different. He is also
currently involved in one "class-action" lawsuit in
UK, which operates outside of the EU consortium is
apparently defining its warranty coverage that is
different from that of the parent company. He told me,
the UK firm wouldn't stand a chance as far as him
representing "consumer rights" on this issue. I
explain the situation here in U.S., not just Leica,
but of all camera manufacturing agencies in terms of
what they define as "grey market" products and that
their discretion of whether they will/will not repair
any items under warranty. His response is that the
U.S. trade laws within the WTO or any other
organization favors the business aspect heavily and
individual consumer rights are not very well protected
on the Federal level. Federal agencies rarely head up
any consumer legal rights except when it comes to
safety or environmental issues. This lack of
government involvement allows the individual business
a lot of leeway in terms of how they interpret these
warranty issues. The problem is further compounded by
the differences between individual states. In that
aspect he says, Europe under the "EU" is more
clear-cut. Also, in U.S. "class action" lawsuits are
rarely practiced for anything other than safety or
environmental issues, where the incentive is
money-driven. The bottom line, these conflicts of
interests in warranty issues can be rectified on the
legal front, but it takes a lot of resources. He just
doesn't see any individual consumer can win, without
legal representation in "class action" lawsuits.

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Replies: Reply from Marc James Small <msmall@infi.net> (RE: [Leica] Warranty survey.)