Brand Focus: Why We Now Have A Warranty Policy
When we first launched Faire Collective, we started out not wanting to offer a product warranty. This decision stemmed from a few unpleasant personal experiences managing (admittedly) a small percentage of customers over the past 8 years for Tocco Toscano (my family business).
I’ll list a few that I can remember. There have been cases where the customer had clearly neglected to take care of the product, causing damage to it. Yet, they insisted that we replace it for them at no cost. There have also been cases where customers asserted that a certain aspect of the product was a defect when it was not the case. For example, certain materials such as full grain vegetable tanned leather have marks and surface "imperfections" (of course, this will not be an issue for the Bond collection as we are using top grain leather), which some customers consider to be defects even though this is an inherent characteristic of the material.
These are merely a few examples of situations we have encountered over the years. Hence, to prevent an abuse of the warranty provision, we avoided having such a service.
In addition, many international luxury brands do not offer a warranty. They do, however, offer the same promise as we do — a commitment to welcome all customers to contact us whenever they have issues with their received products. Unlike a warranty, this promise does not have an expiry.
The abovementioned situations notwithstanding, the majority of our customers have been reasonable, and I believed that as long as we address their concerns fairly and reasonably, our customers would be content with that. This means that should any customer write in with a genuine case of a product defect, we would not hesitate to apologise and repair/replace the product.
Now that I have covered the reasons for not offering a product warranty initially, the reason for us having one now is very simple. During the countless conversations we’ve had via forums or our chatbot, quite a few of you asked for it. It was through our discussions with you that we became cognisant of the general sentiment that high quality products should have an accompanying product warranty as a form of quality assurance to the customer.
I started this brand with Ryan; both of us having every intention to listen and do our utmost to provide what you want and need. It seems that many of you are in favour of a warranty for the security it represents. For this reason, Faire Collective now offers a 1-year warranty on all our products.
We’re doing so because our customers are important and we always try our best to listen — It is as simple as that.
Best,
Joe