why dont more gun manufacturers offer lifetime warranties?

[ZippyDan]

why dont more gun manufacturers offer longer warranties?

whats with all the 1 year warranties?

im interested in buying a sig, which seems like a highly reliable and high quality gun, but im perturbed by their unwillingness to back up their nearly legendary performance and reliability with a warranty befitting a high class product

im used to companies who stand behind their products like benchmade and surefire. certainly knives and flashlights are less complex and dangerous than a firearm... but...

you have a company like Taurus who, judging by the prices i find on used guns at the gun shops, seem to be targeting the more budget minded consumer and would therefore make you assume they have an inferior product, and yet they are offering a lifetime warranty on the gun no matter how many times its changed hands

more companies need to follow this example. its the only thing making me hesitate to pay full retail price for a new Sig 226

 

[orangeninja]

To be honest I don't know. But I will tell you this....Glock and Sig really don't have a stated or implied warranty other than the 1 year thing and even then they leave themselves an out.....but then...you really don't need it. Why? because everytime I have had trouble with a Sig they have always offered to fix it for FREE even if I bought the pistol used. Their customer service is WORLD CLASS and I don't say that about hardly anyone. They have an excellent reputation for having excellent products....they maintain excellent reputations by keeping their excellent products working. And if you work in any type of LE work, they bend over backwards to help you out. Glock from what I hear is much the same way.

Taurus...yeah...they'll fix it. Hope you don't need it by next mont.

And them's the facts.

 

[pete f]

i detect a troll


actually it is the same as why do not car makers offer lifetime warrantees?


they are machines. they need care and understanding. most modern firearms are a lifetime machine, I have rifles made in the late 1800's and the pre WW1 era too. they work just fine, over a hundred years later. should the dealer and manufacturer be required to fix that too?


I have a 17 yo BMW convertable that is nearly pristine with over 120k miles on it, but i have a 2000 truck that has 255K on it and looks it too, should the dealer and manufacturer be required to fix that too?

same driver different uses.

I have a shotgun with less than a hundred rounds thru it, all hunting, allspread over about 21 years. i have a trap shotgun that has 12000 rounds thru it, all in one year. the shotgun that hunts has never been detail stripped. it does not need it. the trap gun i can do in my sleep it has been stripped so many times. it has had many springs, one safety lever, I literally wore the checkering off the safety's head. and two butt pads. should the manufacturer pay for that? heck no

I have two pistols that were war surplused after WW2, both made by companies that made firearms only under war orders, both have never made firearms since. should the manufacturer be required to fix that too?

 

[Lupinus]

I agree with pete on this one.

Lifetime warrenty's are nice but guns are mechanicle thing's and like all mechanicle things will eventually breaks and where do you draw the line? At a spring? At a hammer? A trigger? A slide? The gun frame?

I think anyone who buys a gun should invest the money to put at least a couple hundred rounds through it if not a few thousand. Anything that doesn't break in that time more then likly is not the product of a defect and is just from a matter of wearing out. I say a 3-5 year warrenty would be fine. After that I'd say maybe a limited warrenty for the major parts like the slide and the frame aside from those after a few years or few thousand rounds it goes more to wear and tear then to manufactorer defect.

For instence if I go buy a set of tires and in a thousand mils I can see wire or I have a blow out that isn't from debris I blame that on the manufactor, beyond that Ican be pretty sure that it is wear and tear.

If you buy a car at 18 should the car company fix it in thirty years? All mechanicle thigns suffer breaks from wear and tear it is the nature of the mechanicle beast reguardless of what it is exactly.

 

[ZippyDan]

who in the car world offers a lifetime warranty? no one wants to take on that liability

if it were the same in the firearm world you would have a point. but taurus is not the only one offering lifetime warranty. h&k also offers a lifetime warranty... except its the lifetime of the owner not the gun and its nontransferable. but still, it shows a commitment to quality from the manufacturer. if some manufacturers are able to offer such a guarantee, especially a respected one like h&k, then it just goes to show that expecting such a warrantee from high quality equipment is not so unrealistic as you are trying to make it out to be

anyway, if sig's actual warrantee practices are as customer oriented as the first poster says they are, and the written warrantee is just a way to cover their asses in extreme cases of neglect, then i can live with that

to offer an example (just the first one that came to mind), tippmann makes paintball guns and only offers a written one year warranty. but when you actually need to get service, they dont ask you for anything, not a purchase date, not a proof of purchase, not why it broke, nothing. they just say to send them the product, they fix or replace it within 24 hours, and then send it back to you good as new at their own expense. if sig is like that, then that sounds great

i only worry about the future, as new management could always decide to cut costs by being more strict about warrantee service

 

[Lupinus]

if they choose to fix it great but they shouldnt obligate themselves to be fixing things that are simply from wear and tear. If every few hundred rounds thats one thing but if say ten years down the road something wear out after I have put thousands upon thousands of rounds through it that is the nature of something mechanicle not any lack of warrenty. Just like if a car dies in 50 thousand miles thats cheap but if it dies after three hundred thousand thats just the nature of a mechanicle beast that it will wear out after it has been used considerably.

 

[ZippyDan]

i think you guys are misinterpreting what i mean when i say lifetime warranty. i dont think anyone offers a lifetime warranty in anything that includes wear and tear. as an example, many quality cutlery companies have lifetime warranties. but a folding knife for instance is going to have lots of wear and tear from moving parts as it opens and closes, and the blade itself is going to be subjected to all kinds of wear and tear as its used. no one warranties the blae to stay sharp. no one warranties the blade against abuse- using it in ways it shouldnt be like throwing it or using it as a prybar etc.

other companies will limit the "lifetime" warranty in different ways. by defining lifetime as the life of the owner. or by defining lifetime as the useful life of the product. or at the very least you might have a company like leatherman who offers a 25 year warranty, which although not lifetime, still shows confidence in their own quality

i doubt there are any lifetime warrantees that dont have exceptions and limitations on what exactly is and is not covered. i dont expect that a gun manufacture should expressly cover, for example, worn out springs. that said, many companies that have lifetime warranties but dont cover wear and tear or neglect or abuse, may in some instances choose to handle those problems for free just because they are good companies. but im not expecting that.

the point is, no matter how much a manufacturer might limit a lifetime warranty to make it reasonable, the willingness to use the word lifetime at all shows that they have confidence in their own product, and is something that i like to see when im paying a premium.

at the very least, it seems to me that a 1 year warranty is excessively low, and the standard should be something like 5 years at least if not "lifetime"

 

[pete f]

i disagree.

that said, if i have a five year old remington that breaks because something was made wrong, or was a design failure, they will fix it. can not put that in writing but that is the way it is.

dillon precision, hornady, rcbs leupold all gun accesory companies sometimes willnot let you pay for something you tell them you broke. I called dillon and said I screwed up and assembled the primer feed wrong and i bent the shaft, here is my card number charge me for a new one, they said no and sent me a new one.

I know a guy who has a mauser pistol. it was like 8 years old and developed a crack on the frame, he called they said send us the frame, he did and he got a brand new one back in the mail, stamped with same serial number but with a -b added.

 

[atblis]

Witness pistols come with a "lifetime warranty"

Try and use it, Ha!

I think CZ's five year warranty is reasonable. Apparently they'll actually honor it.

 

[cxm]

Smith & Wesson

S&W has a lifetime warranty on their new products and as a practical matter service most older stuff free too...even if you didn't buy it new.

FWIW

Chuck

 

[benEzra]

why dont more gun manufacturers offer lifetime warranties?

Ruger says in its manuals something to the effect of "Because of the requirements of (such and such an Act), we cannot offer a lifetime warranty, but if something breaks contact us and we will fix it" or something to that effect. It may have something to do with the categories of "Warranty" that are set up by Federal law, and firearms may be hard to pigeonhole.

S&W has a lifetime warranty for the original owner, which is one way of getting out of the fact that a properly-cared-for gun could last a thousand years. S&W requires you to register your name with them with that serial number, though, which is understandable but something I wouldn't want to do since the company is based in Massachusetts, and therefore under the thumb of any Mass. AG who may finagle a way to get those records.

 

[waterhouse]

the point is, no matter how much a manufacturer might limit a lifetime warranty to make it reasonable, the willingness to use the word lifetime at all shows that they have confidence in their own product, and is something that i like to see when im paying a premium.

It sounds like you are stuck on the word "lifetime." I'm not sure why. It isn't some magical word that automatically gets the job done. What if they said "it's a lifetime warranty. But the life is that of a 12 year old dog we have at the shop. When he's gone, so is your warranty. Enjoy!" Does that inspire confidence in their own product?

What you should be concerned about is a company's reputation. I've bought several used SIGs, and I've only had problems with 1 (magazine related feeding problems on a Trailside). I wasn't the original owner, the gun was over a year old, and SIG just sent me a brand new magazine which fixed the problem.

I'd rather not worry about what the company calls it and worry about how the company is going to treat me if I ever have a problem.

 

[Kharn]

No firearms company will flat out say they have a lifetime warranty, but most will fix your gun for free (or very low cost) regardless of who originally bought it.

Kharn

 

[Spiggy]

i think you guys are misinterpreting what i mean when i say lifetime warranty. i dont think anyone offers a lifetime warranty in anything that includes wear and tear.

In the past 14 months I've busted 3 kneepads, 2 vests, 1 grenade pouch, 1 knife, 1 belt, and 2 slings.

BHI has managed to replace them without question. woot, I got my money's worth

 

[NineseveN]

I'm kinda with the OP on this one. I don't care what Sigarms does right now, they could legally, and honestly turn around tomorrow and refuse to service without payment, any firearm that has passed the 1-year warranty point.

HK cannot do that to me. I have a lifetime warranty with them. A contract. If the company changes managment, leadership or even ownership (for the most part, there are loopholes), doesn't matter, my USP will be serviced because that written contract will be honored.

Sigs are nice handguns, but a 1 year warranty is a joke. 5 years is very reasonable and should be the standard on all handguns (like 3 year warranties are on cars). Lifetime warranties are nice, and if you read the contract on the waranty, they do not cover neglect and normal wear and tear, only defects in workmanship and design.

 

[boofus]

I thought Sigarms had an implied lifetime warranty? I've heard you just send in a broken gun and they will fix it for you.

More and more companies are getting on the lifetime warranty wagon. Colt recently started offering it on their new guns.

 

[ZippyDan]

edited thread title to say Longer instead of Lifetime

add S&W to the list of manufactures who stand behind their products, how could i forget

i think its a good point that while Sig may be a great company now, without a written warranty they could easily start screwing people over in the future

think of it this way, any company with a subpar warranty is doing you a favor everytime they fix a gun that is out of a tiny 1 year warranty, as opposed to other manufacturers who are fulfilling an obligation. as a consumer you should all expect the latter

anyway, i think ill still be buying a Sig, based on their reputation and my (hopefully not naive) expectation that they will want to continue their current level of customer service.

 

[XD Dude]

No firearms company will flat out say they have a lifetime warranty, but most will fix your gun for free (or very low cost) regardless of who originally bought it.

Kharn

Doesn't Springfield Armory Flat out say Lifetime Warranty? I could have sworn my XD manual says something to that effect.

 

[f4t9r]

They tell you send it in and let me take a look at it ,If its been taken care of they will fix it.
Thats my expierence with a few of the makers out there. If you buy it at the gun shop the ones I go to will also help you out most of the time