On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 20:01:55 GMT, "PeterCB" no.mail@please wrote:
Thanks Jim - It's not my first drill - I've been coping with a ferm drill
for a while - It worked well at first but has only lasted a year.
It's ready for binning now. I want one for daily use for light to medium
weight drilling (very occasional hammer - when I can't be bothered to
get my sds hammer drill out!)
If I was to opt for the ryobi drill at twice the price of my old drill,
I'd expect it to last at least twice as long.
You might expect it, and that is the rub.
If you buy a proper branded product at a decent price from a
manufacturer with spares and service backup you can expect and get a
good quality product with the ability to get it fixed if and when it
fails. Also, in the context of consumer legislation, if you have
bought a good quality product then you can reasonably and effectively
squeeze the retailer to replace it in case of early failure.
The low end and OEM manufacturers operate to a different principle
because their products are sold through volume distribution outlets
such as B&Q. The retailers do not want to implement any form of
customer service, spares or repair but only to shift boxes - it
doesn't fit their business model and would cost them money.
They also know that because the products are low end, a significant
proportion of would-be customers won't buy them because they are
unknown, there is little or no backup and that a customer would likely
not do well if trying to invoke consumer legislation.
To get around this, they offer a three year warranty, serviced by
exchange and push the returns back to the supplier. The implication
is that after the warranty has expired, there is no further backup, so
in effect, the tool should be considered as written off and living on
borrowed time after that.
Interestingly, the branded manufacturers are now also starting to
offer three year warranties, partly to compete with this but also on
the basis of continued spares availabilitiy, service and quality.
The higher reliability means that they can do this at little cost and
also have an opportunity to gain visibility into the customer base
through returned warranty registration cards. In effect this is
removing any perceived advantage offered by the low end suppliers with
the advantages of better products and better service.
It really becomes a question of which factors are most important to
you
They can be
- quality and performance of the product
- ease and comfort of use
- total cost of ownership over the anticipated product lifetime
- initial purchase price
- availability of spares and service (usually inherent from first
three)
Personally, I set my criteria in the order above.
I can understand if people want to set initial purchase price as their
most important purchase criterion, but it is naive to do so without at
least considering most or all of the others.
..andy
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