New Year, new warranty rules

Well, the festive season is over so it's time to get back on the liver transplant waiting list. It's not that we need a new liver, but with these waiting lists, we figure it's best to get in early, just in case.

And of course, you have to put your name on hold over the holiday season - who wants a new liver when you're not quite finished trashing the old one?

But it's also time to make that list. You know the one - the resolutions. Stuff you promise to finally get done this year. Like opening all this mail marked "urgent" and "confidential" that's been piling up since last year.

Let's see - Trade Practices Act changes to warranty regulations. We don't handle warranty. That's the manufacturer's problem. Always has been. Oh . . . wait . . . Yikes! According to this bulletin, resellers now have to do all the warranty shuffling on behalf of the customer. Just what is going on here? Soon there won't be any point having a shop at all. How can they legislate to stop a fool and his money being parted? We're sure that's one of the Ten Commandments. Yes, we know there were only six members in the band - we're talking about the stone tablets with rules written on them.

It wouldn't have been up the top of the list but surely there'd have been a mention somewhere towards the end about reseller's rights? Whatever happened to caveat emptor? And consumer choice? Surely it's their choice to buy obsolete technology unsuited to their actual needs and requirements? Everyone knows the rule - any technology once purchased becomes obsolete within four or five nanoseconds of leaving the store.

Yeah, okay, fair cop, we have been known to accelerate the natural obsolescence process a little. Well, you know, we're a small outfit, with low turnover. Some of the stock does sit here for a while. At least 50 or 60 nanoseconds in some cases - virtually obsolete before the packing's been ripped open. Which brings us to the second item in the Trade Practices Act bulletin.

It would seem we can no longer refuse refunds if the punters don't have the "original packaging". Well, that's not really as onerous as some resellers are claiming. We'll save a fortune complying with this change.

For starters we won't have to change the packaging on every shelf item whenever we sell one. How else were we supposed to claim their packaging wasn't original?

The new scheme is much better - we'll only ever sell one of any item and when a refund request walks in we can just claim we don't sell such things. Just take a look around, nothing like that on the shelf. That solves the warranty nonsense too; can't provide warranty on stuff we didn't sell in the first place.

Oh, so you think you've spotted the flaw in our new strategy?

The answer is laser-printed invoices of course. No two invoices ever identical - random logo generator, random number generator and random price generator. We invented the idea years ago but we couldn't implement it with the technology available at the time. No, not the randomising, you can do that with a roulette wheel. We know. We spent a fortune proving it.

The technology we were waiting for was the plasma panel needed to display the shop name. Until that turned up we were spending more on sign writers than just honouring the damn warranty.

Gotta go! there's random regulations to resolve!