Sennheiser service center denied warranty for Flipkart Purchase

Onemufc

Onemufc

Skilled
So I had purchased Sennheiser CX 275s from Flipkart in April. Since I had a lot of usage over the calls so I got them.

Worked fine for 5 months before right side starts acting up. So I went to ARCH GALLERY situated at Gopalan inovation mall Bangalore. The guy refused to entertain me and told me that Sennheiser dont honor warranty when purchased from Flipkart. I argued with him and he said no.

I contacted Flipkart and Sennheiser. Flipkart have offered a replacement to me inside two hours. Quite brilliant but the issue is that this is a big problem on a whole.

Havent received anything from Sennheiser.

Will keep you guys posted.
 
Why this Arch gallery place?

I had mailed Sennheiser India last year for some replacement earpads. The reply I got was from :
Sennheiser Electronics India Pvt Ltd
11A-22, First Floor, Cunningham Road,
(Municipal No.60, SRT Road)
Bangalore-560052
Phone : +91 - 080-49037800

Maybe you'll have better luck contacting these people.
 
The guy at the service centre acted stupid and its like alienating people who have bought them online .
 
@Crazy_Eddy

I called up that number twice and nobody picked up. Cunningham road is far man for me hence I went to this place.

I will shoot an email to Sennheiser India about this.
 
I'm suffering from some quality issues on the CX 180 I bought from Flipkart. How should I approach this issue? When I tried using the 'return' option on Flipkart, I have an option to get my money back, not for a replacement. I'd rather they replace it than have my money back.
 
Sennheiser has pretty clear policy regarding warranty. They explicitly mention they will not honor warranty on products purchased from unauthorized resellers online and offline. You need a retail receipt from any of their authorized resellers in order to be eligible for warranty and the warranty is applicable from the date mentioned in the receipt issued to the first end user.

Their products are faked quite a bit, so I guess they have to adhere to their policies stringently, otherwise people would even be coming with fake and tampered products to claim warranty and it would be a real PITA for them.
 
Also, Local computer shops near my place sell Senheiser products, Does it mean they're authorized resellers?
But still they would honor warranty even if he's not.
If it happened to me, Damn straight this would have been headlines in Tech blogs about an consumer suing the company in courts. The law is clear, You cannot use Product Bought Online as an excuse when you have a genuine product with VAT Bill.
 
You won't be able to sue the manufacturer. Warranty from manufacturer is subject to laid out conditions and the manufacturers rights in the matter are also protected by the law. Warranty is applicable only to the first retail end user . As long as you have the receipt for that first sale, you will be able to claim warranty as per the date on it directly from the manufacturer. In some cases, warranty is not transferable. i.e. a warranty contract is only with the first hand retail purchased. A second hand purchaser will not be able to warranty even within the warranty period if the manufacturer has this clause in their warranty terms and can prove that you are not a first hand buyer.

The receipt from an authorized re-seller is the proof that you bought a genuine product from the manufacturer and under those conditions he is giving you warranty that the product will work as described subject to using it properly and if the product fails, they are willing to eat the loss themselves and protect you. Warranty in any other situation is purely at the discretion of the manufacturer.

Merely having a VAT bill issued by some arbitrary seller does not enable you to demand warranty from the manufacturer. A seller who has the necessary registrations might issue a VAT bill even for a fake product or a parallel import. The manufacturer cannot be held liable for such purchases. However if the seller has declared that the item comes with warranty, they can be held accountable. Even if they declared that it is manufacturer warranty, doesn't matter because then they have sold the item under false pretenses and they are still liable.

This is what happened here. Despite not being a authorized reseller, Flipkart sold you the product with the declaration that it comes with warranty. So flipkart is liable to provide you with warranty. If they don't, you can take them to court. You won't be able to take sennheiser to court. Flipkart bill is not proof that that you purchased a authentic product from sennheiser.

http://www.americanbar.org/publications/blt/2014/07/01_payne.html

As will be discussed in depth below, warranties are a key element to your armor against unauthorized dealers. Company warranties should expressly warn consumers that purchases from unauthorized dealers, even of otherwise “new” products from the company, void warranty protection. Aside from giving a benefit to customers who buy from preferred dealers, it provides an important trademark/copyright infringement weapon noted below.

So, adopt a firm warranty policy. Next, publish it on the company website, listing authorized dealers for self-verification purposes. Examples are common with any company struggling with unauthorized dealers (see, e.g., www.monsterproducts.com/warranty/; www.klipsch.com/unauthorized;http://hoover.com/authorized-dealer/). Other steps to mark genuine products may be considered, such as covert or overt markers on the products for tracking them through the distribution chain.
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While not everything in the above link applies to India, basic warranty treatment AFAIK does not differ that drastically in different countries. Some countries have additional restrictions like they have a defined minimum warranty period or certain implied warranties that apply regardless of whether manufacturer mentions them or not. Some regions also have statutory warranties to enforce some minimal level of service from the manufacturer for any genuine product that is legitimately purchased even if its from an unauthorized source, but this does not apply to India.
 
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Authorized dealers are theoretically fronts for the manufacturer/distributors so for all purposes, when you buy from a authorized dealer, you have brought the product from the manufacturer

Express warranty is seen as an independent contract between manufacturer and the retail buyer who brought a product from the manufacturer. (i.e. from a authorized dealer). warranty is not an implicit part of the product purchase and transferability is not implicit either. In fact, warranty for the same product may be different based on who the buyer of the item is. For instance, manufacturers have different warranty policies for retail, OEM or other types of special buyers. Western Digital may give a different period of warranty a retail buyer compared to what they give to Dell. They may give a different warranty to Dell compared to HP.

When somebody buys from the manufacturer and resells it to you, the warranty contract does not automatically transfer to you. The retail purchase from the manufacturer was to this seller and any warranty is applicable only to him. He cannot transfer this contract to you. The manufacturer has no reason to honour warranty to you because there simply is no contract between the manufacturer and yourself. It does not matter at all that its a genuine product from the manufacturer.

On the other hand, if the seller you bought it from declared that you would get warranty for a specific period, you have a contract between the two of you and he is answerable to you in case you need to avail it.

To put it simply, consider that you are putting up some item for sale on TE and you promised a 10 day warranty to whoever buys it from you. Lets say some guy buys it from you, uses it for a week and resells it to another buyer and claims that this new buyer has 10 day warranty that can be claimed directly from you. This new buyer uses it for a week and resells it to another guy with the same promise. Now this last buyer finds that there is some problem with the item within the next 10 days from his purchase and comes to claim his warranty from you.

Do you think that you are answerable to this guy. Would you honour the word of some unknown seller made to an unknown buyer. Do you think you are answerable to this unknown buyer if he comes to you within 10 days from the time you sold the item. How do you know that the people in between did not do something that damaged the product?

When people sell their products on TE and give a copy of their invoice for warranty purpose and the buyer tries to claim warranty using that invoice, he is not getting the warranty himself, he is pretending to be the guy whose name is on the invoice and claiming warranty using that invoice.
 
^ I contacted them and they said you will get the warranty if you buy from authorized sellers which are WS-Retail & My Gadgets on flipkart, and cloudtail on amazon.

Also, They said - "but if you purchase from non-authorised the warranty can only be claimed after authenticity check by our service engineer." - I am not sure what that means :D
 
newuser990 said:
^ I contacted them and they said you will get the warranty if you buy from authorized sellers which are WS-Retail & My Gadgets on flipkart, and cloudtail on amazon.
Click to expand...
So to put it simply all the others, including other online computer stores which sell their headphones, are non-authorized?
 
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