It should be of good quality given the price. There is that old saying, which is quite applicable. You can have two out of three things. You can have cheap, you can have reliable, and you can have good sound. Which 2 of the 3 do you want. Because if you want reliable and good sound then its not cheap. If you want cheap and good sound, its quite possible that it will not be reliable.
In the automotive world, we say, you can have two of three: Fast, Reliable, Cheap. Fast and Reliable is not Cheap. Reliable and Cheap is not Fast. Etc.
Which is nothing actually. Let me pose a simple question; Which company would you rather do business with. One that does nothing for you after the warranty......or one that wants to work with you to find a way to make you happy, even if it something small like paying to ship the item back to you free after you paid for service?
Now I am not saying there is another side to this, BUT, people that think that even asking a company for some help with a product that has failed a somewhat reasonable time after the warranty is some sort of heresy are confusing to me. (sorry for the run on sentence) It NEVER hurts to ask, as one has nothing to lose at that point. It also never hurts to publicly post ones experience with a company. Who knows, just maybe sometime in the future a member of AK will get some help from a company like the one we are discussing.........maybe because they realize that good publicity is better than bad.
Agreed, but my disgracefully-expensive German car threw a minor snag at me, having to do with a tiny motorized interior part. I'm still covered by the extended warranty, which was also expensive, but that turns out to cover drivetrain issues mostly. The replacement cost for this little part is in the
thousands. This tiny motorized part shouldn't even be motorized. But if it's broken it'll cost me the same few thousand on resale. So, a different perspective.
I could tell you a story about putting a three yr old, $1100 Maytag washer out to the curb, poorest customer service I've ever encountered. Should have quit after the first repair wasn't covered under the still in place warranty. I believe it was the pump, $150 if memory serves. The second the tub bearing, they offered to split the cost of the $5 part but the $200 in labor was on me, this after many phone conversations as I moved higher up the chain.
Replaced with a $400 Kenmore and never looked back.
Oh, did I neglect to mention the Maytag already had cancerous rust on the lid from lack of painting the inner rolled edge from the factory, on a washing machine.
Paying more does not mean getting better quality or customer service, it's treating customers with the golden rule, from a manufacturing standpoint all the way to dealing with any reliability issues that might arrise, it's not that difficult.
FWIW, I went the other way with the same brands. Sears was scandalous on warranty repairs--they had a phone tree when you called up. If you wanted a warranty repair the lead time was six weeks. To test it, I selected 'paid repairs' and the lead time was one day. The worst part was that each six weeks they'd fail to repair the unit properly and I'd have to wait another six weeks. Anyway, they're going out of business. Good riddance; that company was eviscerated by rapacious moneymen.
To simply ask for some consideration the warranty is up has nothing to do with being fair, it has to do with being smart. Now if it was 5 years after warranty was up, my expectations would not be high, but it never hurts to try.
Mercedes told me to pound sand, one month after the factory warranty ran out and only the extended warranty was in force. Simply not a covered item. This is a dealer where I've financed their second homes, kids' college educations and family vacations to Bali. This is a mfr to which I've donated a good chunk of my net worth. What can I say, I like nice cars (and this is only one of the brands I've favored). And yes, every bit of it was stupid. I won't be doing it any more. The crazy thing is that I had deliberately stepped down from the high-end models with their fiendish complexity into the middle range and still got burnt.
Apologies for the prolix nature of this post. I needed to vent and this is cheaper than therapy.