From: Blair Barrett <bCbarrett@...>
Subject: Re: [SaxophoneRepair] Re: Saxophone Warranties
To: SaxophoneRepair@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sunday, July 5, 2009, 11:26 AM

Instrument warranties are a pet peeve of mine and I'm speaking from the perspective of a consumer who has had issues in this area in regards to a brand new bass sax I bought a little over a year ago from one of the better known saxophone manufacturers. They assured me the horn was throughly checked by their tech in Boston before it was shipped to me but the fact the original seals from the manufacturer on the shipping boxes were still intact told me otherwise.

IMO instrument warranties from the perspective of the purchaser are next to useless if there is only one place in the world where the horn can be sent for warranty repairs. The cost of transportation and loss of the use of the instrument while it is being serviced under warranty in most cases exceeds the cost of having the repair done locally by a trusted repair tech. It's simply easier and less time consuming to forget about the warranty from my perspective.

From my perspective fit and finish should be included. You can't warrant wear and tear, but at minimum the pads should be the correct size for the cups and seated properly, the tone holes should be level, the keys shouldn't need swedging, all key silencers should be in place, the springs shouldn't be broken, and the necks should fit properly. After paying thousands (in some cases the price of a brand new car) for an instrument it shouldn't cost the purchaser $500 or more to correct problems from the factory (this happened to me on the above mentioned bass). IMO a horn setup shouldn't cost the purchaser more than $200 in labor to adjust the action to a player's preference. If anything needs to be replaced within the first 30 days of purchase including the neck cork, it should be covered. I don't care if the posts in the ribbed construction were lovingly and gently brazed by tiny woodland elvers who all look like Pamela Anderson, because that all goes down the drain if the fit and finish on my brand new horn is so bad I can't get a note out of it when I breathlessly unpack it the first time. We'd never accept that kind of a warranty on a $12 coffee pot, so why do we accept it on an expensive in some cases hand-made musical instrument?

If you truly want to make your customers happy, establish a network of repair techs throughout the country you trust to work on your instruments so it's worthwhile for your customers to obtain warranty repairs (maybe start with some of the people on this list). If the horns are the quality you say they are then a strong easy to invoke warranty shouldn't really eat into your profits. If it does then you need to go back to the factory you've contracted to make your horns and demand better. That will make your customers extremely happy. As the old saying goes, a happy customer will tell three of his friends. An unhappy customer will tell ALL of his friends.

Sorry about the long winded rant. As I said, this is a pet peeve of mine.

Blair Barrett