In the IT world there are warranties, and then there are warranties. A warranty is what you get from Original Equipment Manufacturers – it’s a guarantee of after-sales service and support in the event of some sort of failure.
Those warranties usually come with extensive terms and conditions that cover only very specific faults, however. Should the problem you’re having with your equipment fall outside of those carefully-defined parameters, you’re out of luck – no help for you.
Accidental damage? Nope, sorry, not covered. Water damage? Ooh, no, that’s definitely not our problem. You dropped it? Bummer, you should have been more careful. Looks like you’ll have to buy a new one. An out of box failure? We’re (sort of) sorry to hear that, here’s a list or hurdles you’ll need to jump through to verify that the product was indeed dead out the box, and here’s a longer list of the even more annoying steps required to actually get it sorted out.
That’s often the story end users get when they attempt to take OEMs up on their product warranties. And even when their problem is covered, they must then face the next hurdle – actually getting the repair done and the product back in their hands in a working condition, which can take up to 21 working days.
Not three weeks – 21 working days. In any practical measurement of time that real people use, that’s four whole weeks. In business terms, that can feel like a lifetime. On top of that, there’s no concrete guarantee that the problem will be resolved to the customer’s satisfaction – problems that appear to be covered initially could always be revealed to be caused by something that isn’t, for example.
That’s a very 20th-century way of doing things. Whereas the other kind of warranty I hinted at in my opening paragraph nips every single one of those problems in the bud by prioritising the customer’s needs for a fast and satisfying resolution to their hardware problem – regardless of what it is.
I know – what a concept, right? What’s next, affordable medical aid that covers people for every medical eventuality regardless of pre-existing conditions?
While it may seem unbelievable at first, Tarsus T-Care falls squarely under that other kind of warranty. Not only does it cover notebooks, desktops and tablets for any kind of fault – including accidental ones like drops and faults caused by water damage – but we promise to handle the entire incident within seven working days, from start to finish.
Should the problem not be resolved by the eighth day we will replace the customer’s hardware with a brand-new unit. And unlike your average OEM, we provide the customer a loan unit for the duration of the repair, minimising inconvenience insofar as possible. Heck, we’ll even do data recovery if it’s needed at no extra cost.
We’re able to turn calls around so quickly because we handle every single step in the process, including the collection and delivery of the covered hardware by our hand-picked courier. All the customer needs to do is contact the T-Care call centre, and we take it from there; there’s no need to involve the party you purchased the device from at all.
Thanks to the visibility that control affords us, we’re able to offer customers the ability to track the progress of their warranty claim online in real time. No more calling into a call centre and being bumped from pillar to post because nobody seems to know what’s happening with your claim.
And unlike other warranties, customers don’t even have to register their products in order to enjoy the coverage on offer – when a customer chooses T-Care, they are covered and their policy activated on the T-Care system the second the product is invoiced.
No mess, no fuss. Now that’s what I call customer service.
The whole point of our T-Care warranty is to offer customers genuine peace of mind. T-Care covers them for every eventuality, including things OEMs don’t; we guarantee a fast turnaround time; and in the event we’re unable to meet that seven-working-day SLA, they get a brand-new product. Who else does that?
But that’s not all – we also see T-Care as a major margin enhancer. It doesn’t cost the reseller anything, yet it adds incredible value to the customer. And that’s a massive win for all involved.
Deborah Masoga is a Senior Product Manager at Tarsus Distribution
