Re: Will Radio Shack Honor still honor Lifetime tubes?

"flipper" <flipper@xxxxxxxx> wrote...
To begin with, you wouldn't be so lost as to who said and meant what
if you had read the context you snipped out.

The OP was claiming that when the thing wears out it will not be
replaced because that was it's 'lifetime'.

I think you're the one who's a bit lost. The OP made no such
claim, but merely asked if the "lifetime warranty" would be
honored.

The 'end result' of what you say is what I was trying to explain to
him but how you get there is not correct.

I suggest you check with a lawyer. I write product documents
(including warranty statements) for a living, and have some
10 years of lawyers picking what I write apart to go on.

A 'lifetime' warranty is almost never the 'life' of the thing being
warranted but is, instead, tied to the original owner and/or (usually
both) the thing it's used in. As in 'non transferable'.

If the warranty says that, yes. In this case, the text quoted
makes no mention of the life of the purchaser, nor does it
say that the warranty is not transferable (if a warranty does not state such limitations, they don't exist). It *does* tie "lifetime" to the life of the set the tube is used in, but as I and others have recounted, RS hasn't been asking for any evidence that the tube has been continually in the same piece of equipment, most likely because they know it would be impossible to produce and would make it appear as if the company is trying to be weasely as to its
warranties. Bad PR, if not legally indefensible.

Trying to define 'lifetime' as the lifetime of the device being
warranted leads to the useless interpretation that when it 'dies' it's
'lifetime' ended and so did the 'lifetime' warranty, because it's
dead.

That's almost correct. The "lifetime" warranty on the purchased
and dead item ends when you turn that item in to be replaced with a new one. The replacement item comes with its own warranty.

Neither is a prorated warranty, like 'X miles' on tires.

Not by time, but by miles, merely another limitation. One
could substitute some other measure of use, such as hours
of operation, but since electronic gear doesn't come with
use timers analagous to car odometers, it'd be another impossible demand.

And always exist because, otherwise, 'lifetime' would mean the
'lifetime' of the part and would 'end' when the part dies. Which was
the OP's argument and a clearly useless one because it essentially
says "I warrant the thing until it's broke', and then you buy another
one..

No, it says, "I warrant the thing until it's broke and then I
replace it." Note that nowhere in the text quoted does it say "never buy another tube," or "we'll replace one tube after another." The warranty says that if "lifetime" tubes fail, they'll replace them, period. And they do. They simply don't replace them with new "lifetime" tubes anymore because they're no longer available.

What made it unusually good is that you could get replacement tubes
for as long as you and the device it was originally put in 'live',
I.E. a 'lifetime', despite how many 'tube lifetimes' expired.

There is nothing in the text that says tube after tube. The
tube you buy is replaced under warranty. If you got another "lifetime" tube you got another "lifetime" warranty.
Do you really think that if the warranty meant "replace
tube after tube, forever" some litigious "lifetime" tube owner wouldn't have sued them by now to enforce it?

Gene

.

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