Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/03/04
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]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. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Sports - sign up for Fantasy Baseball http://sports.yahoo.com - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html