Shimano rod warranty?

[Rich Frye]

Call the companies you buy from. Ask them if their warranties and employees are ' by the book , letter of the law ' or are they common sense. You may be surprised at how much leeway they often give...if someone has actually broken a rod during normal use and Shimano refused to warranty it, move up the chain of command.
But , if you are the type of guy who slams his rods in doors you need what Loomis used to have on certain high end product, a Wild Card. No questions asked. They have a similar program now.
Other than that , there are very few companies which warranty customers' own dumb mistakes or blatant fraud.

[Rich Frye]

And, if you put a rod on the edge of a table and give it a quick ' door slam' whack , you will notice a nice clean break. Take the same rod and bend it as if fighting Moby until it breaks you will notice a much less than clean break. It is easy to tell a slammed in the car door rod.
All the rod companies know this, they keep records of returned rods, and I can tell you from experience that many of them will still warranty a door slammed rod, especially if you are upgrading .

[cndbasshunter]

Used rods killed the warranty also. Guys would buy 5 or 10 used old school rods, break the tips on everything and Shimano would replace the fleet with new rods. Another new Crucial comes out and this happens again, just plain abuse to the system. Picture buying 10 compares for $40 each then break the tips on them all. Send them to Shimano 1 at a time and bam every Spring you have a new line of rods.

This is why the term "warranty" was re-writren. I'm sorry if your slow enough to not watch your rods going in and out of doors, trucks whatever you need to pay for what you break plain and simple.

A little kid put a magnet to your tv screen....should I bring it to future shop and claim I turned it on and it blew up...of course not...my kid my fault my next purchase is a tv and well to teach the kid to not do that again. We shouldn't be any different. I hit a ceiling fan once with a rod. Sucked it up put a new tip on it and won't happen again. Shimano has told me that 1-yr is a fine line. If the real seat fails 2 or 3 years down the road they will look after. Forgrip breaking etc...A true "warranty" manufacture defect will always be looked after by Shimano.

Less warranty replacements means a better product with better components and hopefully a full market rod warranty change might happen.

MTBF

Well said

[stubbs]

It only increases costs to consumers as they are forced to replace rods for longer. Like Gary said, if there is a true defect it's going to show up quick. If you step on it 10 years down the road, take your lumps.

So I guess if this is true...that replacing all the rods impacts the consumer, we should expect Shimano's prices on rods to drop pretty soon as they are saving money. I'm guessing this is not the case.

It will be interesting to see if the loss in Warranty impacts Shimano or the brands which have a limited lifetime warranty show an increase in sales. I believe Shimano is hoping that either they have enough loyalty/quality built in to overcome any potential loss in sales from the change in warranty or that other companies follow. If Shimano does come back to the limited lifetime warranty (even if only on their higher end rods), you can see they suffered in loss of sales.

I know personally I've stopped buying Shimano rods. I agree most rods break in the first couple outings, but I may buy a rod and it may be a year or more until I fish it a number of times. I fish maybe twice a month and with technique specific rods, I don't use them all the time. Add in also fishing for other species, I may only use a rod once or twice in a given year...I'm not made of money so quality and a company standing up for the quality plays a factor for me.

[Rich Frye]

So I guess if this is true...that replacing all the rods impacts the consumer, we should expect Shimano's prices on rods to drop pretty soon as they are saving money. I'm guessing this is not the case.

Or, Shimano was not making nearly what they should have ( or needed) on a quality product due to abuse of an extremely liberal warranty policy. Possibly "saving" only what is needed to be where the accounts say.

[Teal101]

It only increases costs to consumers as they are forced to replace rods for longer. Like Gary said, if there is a true defect it's going to show up quick. If you step on it 10 years down the road, take your lumps.

So I guess if this is true...that replacing all the rods impacts the consumer, we should expect Shimano's prices on rods to drop pretty soon as they are saving money. I'm guessing this is not the case.

It will be interesting to see if the loss in Warranty impacts Shimano or the brands which have a limited lifetime warranty show an increase in sales. I believe Shimano is hoping that either they have enough loyalty/quality built in to overcome any potential loss in sales from the change in warranty or that other companies follow. If Shimano does come back to the limited lifetime warranty (even if only on their higher end rods), you can see they suffered in loss of sales.

I know personally I've stopped buying Shimano rods. I agree most rods break in the first couple outings, but I may buy a rod and it may be a year or more until I fish it a number of times. I fish maybe twice a month and with technique specific rods, I don't use them all the time. Add in also fishing for other species, I may only use a rod once or twice in a given year...I'm not made of money so quality and a company standing up for the quality plays a factor for me.

No, have shipping rates dropped because fuel prices are? If theres enough demand at the given price they will maintain them. It means Shimano will see more profit and will not need to increase the price further.

I dont have much of a dog in this fight though. Most of the rods I buy have no warranty to begin with, including my Shimano Ultima.