SUB ZERO

[amos1]

Not sure if this is ok to talk about but here goes.
My wife and I own a small appliance repair shop here in California, we work on high end appliances and a good portion of our customer base have sub zero refrigerators. Just learned if you purchase a subzero part from the distrubitor exclusive to subzero and wolf. If a new part that you installed goes bad or is defective you cannot get a replacement unless the customer calls subzero telling them that the part is bad then and only then they will send the new part to the customer. Found out from my customer that subzero is telling the customer to use only factory authorized centers even when the appliance is way out of warranty. Is anybody else seeing this?  That is like going to your local auto repair place and they install something on your car it goes bad the next day so you go back for the warranty replacement just to find out the now the customer needs to contact gm to get the replacement part sent to them while they are saying that you need to bring your car to the dealer only. It sounds illegal to me, does anybody know anything about the legality about this?
Thanks
Amos

[theoldstoveguy]

 Common with most manufacturers. Since there are a lot of parts changers are out there, they may think it was misdiagnosed to begin with.

[Joko]

Yes Sub zero has been doing this for a while. Also if you call tech support they request the customers info to later send them a letter stating that they can void their warranty if someone other then a factory authorize work on the unit. This is not true and it is not on the warranty. Subzero warranty is 2 years anything goes, 3-5 years seal system including parts an labor, and from 6-12 years seal system parts only. And yes what they are doing somewhat illegal but they know how to play their cards. One day someone will take them to curt for misleading the customers. Some where there they have to be braking some kind of industry or business law. I had training at the factory and use to work for one of their authorize servicers and man those machine are good looking but they brake more than a regular refrigerator. And to protect their equipment mistakes could be the reason for this.
Just continue to a good job. Ignore Subzero, keep a positive attitude, try to avoid calling subzero for tech help, that is an inmediate leter to your customer to scare them away from you.

Good luck

[JWWebster]

Most of the SubZero stuff I saw was way over engineered. Complicated. Parts were hard to order from them and I was an appliance parts dealer. In order to get parts from them I had to pay them some kinda mess. We said screw that. Over-engineered crapola