How likely are the longer FL warranties to be fulfilled?

Alright, lets say you go and buy a light from a major flashlight maker, and we'll call that company FourJetEagleZebraOlightWayman. So they offer a 10 year warranty, but after 6 years you have a problem because the switch breaks due to it being a faulty switch(why it wouldnt have failed earlier if it was faulty might seem like an obvious question, but bare with me here, its just a hypothetical example, and stop being so critical!:laughing

Anyway, when you go to send it back, you find that the company that produced it is defunct, but they are still in business after they changed their name, and now they are called "ThruFireLumaSevens". So you'd probably be out of luck there. I know if it was a Chinese company you probably wont have much recourse, but what if that happened in America, would the owners still be liable even though they changed the name of the company after closing down the old name, and maybe even moving to another factory?(I know that the same people who might have questioned the faulty switch not breaking til 6 years, might also question whether you'd even care if a 6 year old, potentially obsolete light would be worth sending back for warranty, but again, its hypothetical, and you should really work on that tendency to be so critical!)


It doesnt just have to be about flashlights either, this can and does apply to many products. How would the above situation be dealt with, and would the warranty have to be honored? A lot of these flashlight companies are very new, and have only been around for a matter of months to just a few years, so its not like we are talking about corporations like The Avedis Zildjian cymbal company that has been around for about 400 years...

FWIW, some flashlight manufacturers exempt switches from their warranties.

HighlanderNorth said:

I know if it was a Chinese company you probably wont have much recourse, but what if that happened in America, would the owners still be liable even though they changed the name of the company after closing down the old name, and maybe even moving to another factory?(I know that the same people who might have questioned the faulty switch not breaking til 6 years, might also question whether you'd even care if a 6 year old, potentially obsolete light would be worth sending back for warranty, but again, its hypothetical, and you should really work on that tendency to be so critical!)

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You pays your money and takes your chances. Personally, I have no doubt that SureFire, Streamlight, Mag and Pelican will still be in business 10 years from now.

Have we come to a point where we have discussed all available flashlight topics and are left only with unanswerable speculative topics?

I would imagine if the company went under, even if re-opened under a different nmae, you would be out of luck getting warranty work.

Here's a thread about NovaTac, haven't heard much since this:

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?332187-Excellent-Service-from-Novatac-Lumeway

Here's the NovaTac support page on LumeWay's website:

http://www.lumeway.com/NVT-Support.html

Not worried too much because I just sold my last NovaTac. It was in perfect working order, though.

Realistically, I'm hoping for my FL companies to be around to support my warranties for 3-4 yrs. By that time I will have gotten my use out of them, and they'll probably be so obsolete, I won't care to repair them. One year warranties are just too short, my Zebralight is already a throw-away if it stops working.

Just as important is where some of these companies will require you to RMA the light back to for warranty work.... back to Asia sucks both from a cost and time perspective (if you're in the US). Some dealers seem really good and have their own in house repair shops that fix most problems without dealing with the manufacture and some also will handle the international shipping for you, if they can't repair it themselves.

Dr. Strangelove said:

Have we come to a point where we have discussed all available flashlight topics and are left only with unanswerable speculative topics?

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Congratulations! You just invented flashlight religion!

:duck:

I've found at least one case where a company honored the warranty on a product made by a company they bought. When each of the 3 Inova 24/7 lights I have developed cracks in the battery housing, NiteIze repaired each one, never mind that those lights were made and sold years before NiteIze aquired Inova.