[AusNOG] Vendors back charging on support and maintenance.

[Paul Wilkins]

The vendor has no preexisting relationship with the purchaser, so the
vendor can dictate such terms as suit to bring the device under support.
The purchaser can take it or leave it - unless the vendor's actions are,
beyond dispute, in breach of the law.

There's no consumer protection rights. The original purchase doesn't apply.

You could argue the 18 months support in arrears for no benefit, amounts to
restrictive practice. It arguably restricts resale of the vendors goods. It
also arguably exploits a monopoly the vendor has in support of their
product.

The vendors have a good argument that it's necessary to backdate support to
avoid support being paid only on RMA. There's a better argument that it
prevents the unscrupulous buying failed equipment to bring back into
service cheaply.

So it's moot. There's arguments both sides, and the law will not lightly
restrict people's rights to draft contracts as they choose without a clear
case of illegality.

But what if you got the ACCC interested enough to challenge? Even if you
won, the consequence would be the vendors, rather than backdating support
18 months, would institute a programme for testing hardware being brought
in from non preexisting support arrangements, and charge the equivalent of
18 months support for doing it.

I am not a lawyer. This is not expert opinion.

Kind regards

Paul Wilkins



On 27 April 2018 at 22:43, Karen Hargreave <karen at iamunique.net.au> wrote:

> Devils advocate here, but could it be argued that the products lifetime
> ended in some aspects once the original purchaser decided to sell it? Of
> course that may depend on its age, but I would think that it could be
> reasonable to say that if the original purchaser had had the item for a
> number of years, then sold it, it was possibly because a newer and bette
> model had come along and thus the original products useful life had ended.
> So could a vendor not then assume that this is a fair way to judge a
> products life? Like I said, playing devils advocate.
>
> As for the original issue, then I don't see why some sort of
> recertification of the item couldn't take place. Is this sort of thing the
> vendors normal practice? If so, then perhaps it was something that might
> have needed to be thought about when purchasing the item.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On 27 Apr 2018, at 5:07 pm, Nick Gale <nickgale at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Lifetime warranties usually only apply to the original purchaser though.
>
>
>
> On 27 April 2018 at 16:00, <trs80 at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 27 Apr 2018, Richard Bayliss wrote:
>>
>> > The ACCC consumer guarantee states it doesn’t apply to second hand
>> (private sales) goods, which is the scenario the OP stated.
>>
>> Private (personal) sales, but businesses are still covered:
>> https://legalvision.com.au/i-sell-second-hand-goods-do-the-c
>> onsumer-guarantees-apply/
>>
>> Again, none of this helps the customer deal with the original vendor
>> asking for 18mo support in arrears. It might if the hardware died without
>> support, since many vendors provide a lifetime hardware warranty and as
>> such it would be reasonable to expect that under the ACL.
>>
>> --
>> # TRS-80              trs80(a)ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au #/ "Otherwise Bub here
>> will do \
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>> best     |
>> [ "There's nobody getting rich writing          ]|  -- Collect and hide
>> your   |
>> [  software that I know of" -- Bill Gates, 1980 ]\  nuts." -- Acid Reflux
>> #231 /
>>
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