In Reply to: The other side of service from your LDS posted by Ken Kurtis on July 07, 2006 at 15:24:08:

To be honest, it's not clear to me what the value added is in having the dive shop involved in this warranty service. In most consumer industries, we're told not to send products back to the retailer, but rather to deal with the manufacturer.

It also seems of mighty dubious legality for the manufacturers to require us to have bought thier product through an authorized dealer in order for them to honor the warranty. This is reminiscent of the way many manufacturers years ago required people to register their products in order to get warranty service. That was stricken down. Of course there's such a convoluted set of international subsidiaries of manufacturers, distributors in different countries, etc, that the U.S. Suunto distributor will claim they should have nothing to do with a Suunto bought from a U.S. non-authorized dealer that came through channels in, say, Japan.

Bottom line is that people should be able to send defective gear back to the maker and get warranty service. Ken, why does a store need to be involved? (Apart from hand-holding, creating warm fuzzies and/or keeping out "unauthorized" retailers?)