Hi Ahmad,

Your statement potentially might happen. My presumption is based on typical IT hardware post-sales maintenance service plus currently popular groupon purchase service (discounted purchase of consumer products / voucher with home delivery).  When these 2 services combined, what you mentioned might happen.  Moreover, vendor might not come to pickup, send back & diagnose / repair at their factory / workshop, they might train call center agent to troubleshoot by asking some questions / remote console into the item before making decision to send a brand new unit to replace instead of repair (saving 1 trip less).

Regards,

Fung

Thanks for your answer Fung, it's rally what i was thinking of.

I'm not sure if big vindors are willing to adopt such operation in the near future. Nontheless, i believe a centralized service with call center as an intermediator will lead to  a huge improvement in satisfaction ( i think!).

The problem I see with this e-commerce model is what happens when a device is out of warranty.  My Kobo e-reader broke down after 18 months (past the manufacturer's one-year warranty).  The manufacturer refused to repair and/or replace it saying the model was obsolete.  And there was no place where I have it repaired. So my third-party extended warranty became useless.Refusing to repair my e-reader proved costly to the book retailer because they lost a previously loyal customer.

The problem with this e-commerce model is that when it is poorly managed, there is a risk of increasing both e-waste and customers dis-satisfaction. A properly manager e-commerce model would manage post-warranty items as a win-win opportunity:  offering a rebate on a newer model or by  offering a refurbished model at a lower cost.