I work at a call center that provides technical and warranty support for one of the largest retailers in the world. We cover things like computers, TVs, and household appliances. On paper, my job involves helping people troubleshoot their device, and if that doesn’t work, I help them book a repair technician.
Sounds good right? Wrong. Company policy has many sneaky ways of making customers’ lives a living hell.
For any item we handle, the customer has only 90 days to return it. Products that fail after this have to be handled by the manufacturer warranty.
The manufacturer only makes a profit off of a sale. Exchanging a faulty item for a working one is a major loss from this point of view, so exchanges or refunds are the last resort in any warranty process.
Countless times, I have seen manufacturers keep sending technicians to “fix” faulty units until the warranty runs out. And I have seen countless units fail mere weeks outside the warranty period.
All of this is a direct result of the profit motive. In order to artificially increase demand, capitalists design things to fail—engineers even take courses in “planned obsolescence.” A “warranty” under capitalism just disguises this fact. The capitalists have every interest in not repairing the product, so us workers are left with no warranty and forced to buy new appliances every few years.
– Richard D., Montreal
