fronobulax
Bassist, GAD and the Hot Mess Mods
- Joined
- May 3, 2007
- Messages
- 24,779
- Reaction score
- 8,909
- Location
- Central Virginia, USA
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- 5
Yeah, exactly what I was getting at, although Frono thinks a good lawyer could rip that up, citing a sizable body of case law where that exact issue has been contested.
The reason I asked upthread about how the warranty was laid out was because the quoted information was contradictory. If the layout was something like a title/header that said "limited lifetime warranty" and text providing details, then the case law has been that the details are what is binding. So there is a one year warranty covering defects in materials and workmanship etc. The header is treated as a typo or a proofreading error or some other accident. The customer is generally out of luck unless a) the company has been informed of the error numerous times and has elected to not fix it or b) the customer can prove that they relied upon the error when making the purchase.
To clarify the Guild warranty statement, the going in position is that the lifetime of the warranty is no longer than the lifetime of corporate version of Guild that offered the warranty. But there are circumstances under which the successor entity will accept responsibility for warranties offered by the predecessor. We believe we know that when Cordoba bought Guild from Fender they also took on warranty liability for New Hartford production. We don't know whether warranty responsibility for late Westerly, Corona and Tacoma production remains with Fender or whether the liabilities were also "sold" to Cordoba or whether they were retained by a shell corporation that no longer exists. I am reasonably certain that any pre-FMIC Guild warranty is no longer legally in force although there are examples where a warranty claim has been honored. But doing so is an act of corporate goodwill and not a legal requirement.