I know you have already mailed it back to them but you asked for opinions.
I think most people expect that a retail warranty period begins at the time
of sale. Many companies that sell to oem's follow the same policy - I do a
fair bit of the purchasing at work and we've bought electronic modules that
sat on our shelf for a few months before we built them into a product, and
then had them fail more than one year after our purchase but much less than
a year after our sale to a retail customer. Most of the time we have to eat
it, our suppliers say their one year warranty starts at the time of their
sale to us, not our retail sale to an end user. Some suppliers will cover
them, and we highly value our relationship with those vendors :-), but the
majority don't.

The purchase contract on a large piece of lab equipment when I was in
college explicitly stated that the warranty started on the date we accepted
that the equipment met all performance specs, and spelled out some number of
days after our physical receipt of the box that we had to test the unit and
accept or return it.

Anyway, you asked for opinions :-).

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Regards,
Carl Ijames
"Steve B" wrote in message ...

I bought a tachometer from Northern Tools. It sat in a box for a few years,
and was never connected. I then connected it, and got nothing. I contacted
them, and they said that after a year, they would make no adjustment. If
the device did not work the first time out of the sealed box, I feel it was
defective, and they should replace defective goods. I have bought things
from them, and enough to the level that they send me a hard cover catalog.
What would you do, and what is your opinion of this situation.

I feel that the item was defective as it did not work out of a sealed
antistatic envelope, and they should either give me a credit, a replacement,
or a refund. It was about $40.

Steve