Warranty Service

There’s been much discussion about the return policy, or lack of one, in the Philippines. The other side of that story is the manufacturer’s warranty coverage for that product. Many large ticket items will have warranties of 1 year or much longer. So how do you deal with that here?

What I’ve learned in my short time here is that is very important to find out if the company that produced your product has a local service center. At the very least, they have an agreement with a company that handles their service. I don’t mean a service center somewhere in the Philippines, but local to where you are staying.

One of my first purchase upon moving to Davao was to get a set of speakers for my iMac. I listen to all of my music from my computer and had a really nice setup back in the States. Unfortunately they would have cost too much to send, were 110v and had some age on them already. I had decided to get something new after I got here. That wasn’t as easy as it sounds, because there are not a lot of mid to higher end computer speakers being produced anymore. There were even less options here.

I finally located a some that I liked, Edifier S330, but I had to have them shipped from Manila. Though I could find the same brand here in Davao, I could not find that particular model of speakers that I wanted. I had assumed, incorrectly, that since the brand of speakers were carried here in Davao, that I’d be able to have them serviced here.

Of course they started acting up after about 4-5 months and that’s when I found out the cold hard facts. If I wanted to have them serviced under warranty, then I needed to send them to Manila and pay shipping both ways. That didn’t add up to me. I did as much research as I could, but I could not find anyone to work on them, other than out of warranty.

There are any number of electronic repair shops here. Usually the are quite inexpensive, too. My problem was, and still is, that I don’t know of one that I can trust to do good work. It appears most of these places are well versed in working on old tube televsions, videoke, and fans. I did take my unit to one that was local to me and they tried for the longest time to get it working, but in the end the volume is less than half what it should be. Fortunately I have another way to input, through the headphone jack, and it still functions in a normal fashion. Some day when I find a local shop I can trust, I’ll have them look at it again.

I’m much more careful now with the brands that I will buy here. Samsung goes to the top of my list for most items, as they have a local factory service center. That’s not to say I won’t buy any item without a factory service center, but I’ll be aware that the warranty may not be of much use when I determine whether or not to make the purchase.