According to all the house rules on writing articles like this, I’m supposed to let you know within the first paragraph what it is that I’m writing about. So here it is – I want to talk about on-site warranties – and how they are meant to work. And whether they do work. And who benefits.
But we’ll come to that in a few hundred words time.
As everyone who knows me is well aware, I have always taken a holistic view to the business of lighting. My part in this wonderful jigsaw of talents is to be considered good enough to put together sufficiently original ideas to create three – and four-dimensional visual scenes . . .and call it lighting design.
In a previous life I was in charge of installation teams, and in yet another iteration I was the guy knocking on the door begging to be let in to tell/sell architects and interior designers all about a new range of fixtures. So I have good reason to see the lighting world in terms of multiple viewpoints. I think it’s stood me in good stead.
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Which brings me to a conversation that started just a week ago and has since turned into one of those nagging feelings that there’s something going on that I ought to know about . . . and don’t.
It started with The Light Review recording a training video for my good friends at LIA; I’m talking to Andy Godfrey, an electrician based in Dorchester. Andy and I go back more than a few years and he’s one of the few installation guys who seems to understand what I’m trying to achieve even when it may not be absolutely clear to me . . . and we were talking about failed fixtures.
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Manufacturer v. Installer
There are innumerable stories about failed installations – and whoever is telling you the story you can be sure that the fault lay with the other guy. Designers and specifiers hardly get a look in (though I’ve been hearing some corkers recently!); this is a first-past-the-post argument between the supply beasts and the install beasts; velociraptors v. T. Rex if you like. Choose your beast.
The contractor drawing the short straw
The contractor is told what to install; installs those fixtures; those fixtures fail. Who you gonna blame?
The contractor is charged with delivering a working electrical installation. They’re the ones on site with the smoking screwdriver, so its obviously their fault. Get it sorted!
Reasons for failures (not including daft and unworkable design ideas that should have been smothered at birth):
- Incorrect wiring – live wires going where live wires shouldn’t ever go;
- Faulty driver – but you won’t know that until you power them up;
- Faulty LED engine – ditto.
- Incompatible control infrastructure – welcome to the dark realm of LED controls
- A third party collision – insufficient recessing depth; proximity to water; walls where you weren’t expecting to see walls; and so it goes.
At this point, the installation contractor is truly exposed. Its second-fix time, so the project is coming to a close; there’s pressure to get finished and get out; everyone’s looking at you.
Whatever move the contractor takes, its going to cost them money – and that may be money that never comes back, whether it’s a wiring problem or a faulty fixture.
The electrical contractor has long held this grievance; that everyone else thinks that putting an installation to rights comes at no cost to anyone. Even the manufacturer will assume that the electrical contractor is there to change faulty equipment for them, with no recompense offered.
The manufacturer drawing the short straw
Of course, as soon as there’s a problem on site the phone lines light up with an intensity drawn from frustration and – yes, anger – at what’s happening on site. And it MUST BE the fault of the fixture. This may be magical thinking, willing the problem to be a faulty driver and a manufacturer making a visit to the site in Plymouth from their base in Leeds will solve everything. This is rarely how things work out, by the way.
But sometimes it is a faulty component in the fixture, or perhaps the fixture isn’t doing what it’s meant to be doing. The manufacturer can put their hands up – the installation contactor will still be in the frame for making good.
Does it have to be this way?
Its pretty much a linear situation.
- Fixtures get installed.
- Fixtures fail.
- Fault is analysed and responsibility determined.
- Failed fixtures are replaced and new fixtures installed.
The installing contractor is engaged at each of those steps, like it or not. The NICEIC has a useful document ‘Electrical Contractors and Consumer Law‘ that doesn’t make for comfortable reading from the contractor’s side of things, because the legal contract will certainly cover the obligation to deliver an installation that meets all the necessary demands of the project. That means a 100%, failure-free installation.
So this needs to be about mitigation. What can the installation contractor do to limit their expenditure when they know, or seriously believe, that the fault is not of their making.
And so, finally, we come to on-site warranties.
I’ve known Luckins since I was a junior engineer in the contracting department, mainly because there was no one below me to pass the job of updating the Luckins pages every few days when the latest set pf prices came in.
Anyway, there’s a very handy blog on the Luckins site, written by my friend Graham Lewis, that talks about how powerful an on-site warranty can be – used properly and with understanding. You might even say ‘use with compassion.’
This might sound counter-intuitive but we all ‘happily’ pay our car insurance despite being absolutely certain that we won’t be making any claims. So manufacturers who offer on-site warranties are likely to be those companies who least need it. And what a bonus it can be to an installer, to know that problems not of their own making may be covered by a manufacturer’s warranty. That’s a mitigation worth having.
The manufacturers will, of course, ensure that they have produced an on-site warranty offer that best suits their needs. You’ll rarely find the entire product output covered by one of these – and if you do, that’s a company probably worth talking to. Or its a rubbish warranty offer.
The devil is still in the detail.
A couple of things here:
- Just because a manufacturer offers on-site warranties does not mean automatically that they are offering a good deal.
Come on! Leopards and spots come to mind; scorpions and frogs come up closely behind. And as WC Fields (and D. Trump probably mutters under his breath) ‘never give a sucker an even break‘. - The other thing. There’s a risk with on-site warranties that end-users see the new writing on the wall and understand the potential benefit of having on-site protection post-installation and even post-defects liability.
If the conversation swings this way then specifiers like me will have to look at the world very differently. We’ll be having conversations with those manufacturers who don’t offer formal on-site warranties because they’ve never been needed before, aren’t needed now; won’t be needed in the future because, more than just occasionally, company reputation trumps the paperwork of a warranty.
And what action will they take? . . . because action will most certainly be needed.
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