Salem partner takes Ingram, Redington to court

SALEM, INDIA: A Salem-based channel company Rams, has filed a legal suit against Redington and Ingram for not complying with warranty promised. The dealer has filed a suit demanding for Rs 25 lakh from each distributor.

“In the past four to five years, we have been facing several warranty-related issues, due to which we have lost several crores of business. Besides, reputation has taken a hit due to this,” said GV Ramanan, Customer Relationship Manager, Rams.

The partner has alleged that when he brought the material from Ingram and Redington he was assured that they carried a warranty of three-years but the distributors refuse to confirm the same.

“We deal with corporate customers and when we ordered the products we also placed orders for Care Packs for extending the warranty up to three years. However, warranty has not been upgraded in any of the products till date. When our customers checked with HP service team, they were informed that we have sold the products with a one-year warranty only. Now the customers are questioning our code of conduct and are alleging that we have swindled them,” claimed Ramanan.

The partner approached both Redington and Ingram about two months back, to check the warranty status of the products but he is yet to get any update from them. Generally, the vendor provides one-year warranty for any products and upgrades the warranty to three years by adding another product called warranty extension pack or Care Pack, which costs approximately Rs 5,000. Ramanan claims that the warranty extension pack or the Care Pack is neither shown in the bill nor does it get updated in the system.

“There is a serious contention, which every channel partner has to think of. Every commercial product is sold with three years warranty and the Rs 5,000 the customer pays for the Care Pack is either taken by the vendor or the distributor or by both. This amount, when added up, will lead to several crores as more than one lakh PCs are sold on an average across the country. The vendor or the distributor is also not making things clear on who should upgrade the Care Packs and things will get solved once we know this, as there are no proper education from the vendors on the care packs,” Ramanan alleged.

When Manoj Shankar, former Branch Manager, Ingram Micro, Coimbatore was contacted he said, “We have given our part of solution to Rams and generic issues such as warranty are to be addressed with the vendors, as distributors won't be able to give any solution. We have passed on this notice to our legal department."