Hi, On 12/02/2012 10:03 AM, James Harper wrote:
It was covered, but not clearly. The rights and obligations for suppliers and consumers are now much more clearly spelled out. They even have a completely different section for resolution of faults in goods obtained before 1/1/11.
I don't disagree, but it makes it much less likely that retailers can support such claims without manufacturer support. Lots of commodity items only have a very, very small markup and any returns, even during warranty periods, wipe out any margin made on the original sale. Extending the obligations beyond manufacture warranty period on to retailers and there is almost certainly going to be losses on too many sales. What this will mean is that we'll all have to pay much more for this commodity hardware as the number of sellers will diminish significantly and competition will fail to deliver lower pricing -- each retailer *must* sell at a premium to cover this obligation. I guess more and more buyers will buy from the US and import the goods themselves rather than pay such inflated prices due to these conditions. Myself, well I have access to "wholesale" pricing from a number of avenues, but can often find retail pricing that is lower than such wholesale pricing, sometimes much, much lower! Again, that makes it impossible to be a retailer of such items. If you sell such items at a loss, [which is now very likely] then you need to make up monies in other ways to subsidize the sale. NB: I've bcc-ed you James, hoping that you get a proper list copy of the email -- please do the same with any replies you make... ditto for replies from others please. -- Kind Regards AndrewM