I no longer recall where I encountered this, but I distinctly remember
the battery having been already taken off the shelf or brought from the
storeroom, and *after that* I was asked how long a warranty I wanted.

Of course it is possible to find batteries with different capacities and
different CCA ratings and perhaps correspondingly different warranty
periods -- and that may even be the more common situation -- but I do
not believe that it is universally and necessarily so

MB


On 01/06/04 08:49 pm George E. Cawthon put fingers to keyboard and
launched the following message into cyberspace:br

I see that somebody else has suggested otherwise wrt water
heaters, but I do recall car batteries being sold with
varying-length warranties, and as far as I could see it was
the same battery, but they punched a different warranty
expiration date depending on the price paid.

Exactly. It's ALL number crunching, and anybody that believes
differently is burying their head in the sand.

It's all sitting in an Excel file in a computer at the
battery/water heater/? company:

They have historical data on how long the product lasts before
failure.

With that data, they can calculate failure rates for the
entire lifespan of an average battery.

With that data, they can calculate how muct to charge for the
"extended warranty" (longer guarantee) so they still make
money on the deal.

Economics 101. Capitalism 101. God Bless America.

Maybe they do that where Minnie shops, but not the places I
shop. If it were just punching in new numbers then explain
why the capacities of the batteries with the longer
warrantees are larger or in some cases the number of plates
and the weights are different.