Definition Quality Complaints vs. Warranties - What are the differences?

R

Rosana

#1
Hi,:)

I am having trouble understanding the difference between quality complaints and warranties.

The Customer Service department asked me “when do I need to fill out a complaint?” Our product has a 3 year warranty. If we receive a warranty do I need to fill out a complaint?

I already searched on all of the elsmar.com forum and I could not find anything.

I would appreciate any help.

Thanks

Rosana :)
 
Elsmar Forum Sponsor

Paul Simpson

Trusted Information Resource
#2
What about the similarities?

Rosana said:
Hi,:)

I am having trouble understanding the difference between quality complaints and warranties.
Both are forms of corrective actions for your company and should be dealt with as such.


Rosana said:
The Customer Service department asked me “when do I need to fill out a complaint?” Our product has a 3 year warranty. If we receive a warranty do I need to fill out a complaint?
Perhaps you can advise them to fill in a complaint when they judge the warranty to be serious - i.e. needing investigation in its own right as opposed to an analysis of the warranty trends.


Rosana said:
I already searched on all of the elsmar.com forum and I could not find anything.

I would appreciate any help.

Thanks

Rosana :)
Hope that helps.
 

Jen Kirley

Quality and Auditing Expert
Staff member
Admin
#3
What a great question. This is an unclear aspect and deserves exploration.

Different messages received during complaints may indicate whether or not to include the issue in corrective actions. Arguably the customer isn't always right and complaints may not accurately reflect the product's/service's intended design, usefulness or durability.

Here are some flow charts I found to help define the complaint issue:
http://www.ci.salina.ks.us/HRelations/CompFlowChart.htm
http://hr.fsu.edu/elro/flowchart.html
http://www.otleycollege.ac.uk/Documents/Document7.htm
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/secretariat/1-2-4.html (this one is procedural)

In my understanding, warranties are explicit terms of gratifying a redress within a defined context. I expect a complaint to land outside a warranty's terms: that is, the problem has caused hardship other than product replacement.

Given that understanding the complaint would lie between the quality cost levels for warranties and litigation, which is, in my understanding, unresolved serious complaints.

The complaint process should thus reflect opportunities to improve areas where the company may benefit more greatly from solving the problems via corrective action than simply focusing on product replacement, as in cases of pain, disfigurement, periperhal damages and so on.

I hope this helps!
 
R

Rosana

#4
thank you very much for your inputs.
I think I understood what you were trying to say to me.

Thanks again both of you

Rosana :)
 
B

BadgerMan

#5
I can only speak for our own organization. We have two basic categories for failures, one being initial failures, infant mortality type failures or “out-of-the-box failures”. The other category is warranty claims or field failures. Generally speaking, we take formal corrective action for all initial failures whereas we look for trends with the field failures before taking corrective action. There are exceptions though like when there is a field failure that is serious in nature or when the customer explicitly requests root cause analysis.

Our products are very complex and expensive so they are almost always returned for repair when there is a failure. Hence, we are able to document the complaint, analysis, and “correction” activities for ALL failures. This makes trend analysis much easier than if we were relying on data from external sources. However, detailed root cause analysis and corrective action activities are reserved for trends or infant mortality type failures.
 
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