“My product stopped working” is the most expensive sentence in a hardware brand’s inbox — and the one where merchants make the costliest mistakes, usually because two different things get mixed up: the legal guarantee (mandatory) and the commercial warranty (voluntary). We run two hardware brands ourselves; this distinction decides who pays, for how long, and what the customer can demand.
The two tracks, in one minute
The legal guarantee (conformity liability) is statutory and yours as the seller. In the EU it runs at least two years from delivery for new goods. If the product turns out defective in that window, the customer has rights against you — regardless of who manufactured it.
A warranty is a voluntary promise on top — usually the manufacturer’s, sometimes yours (“3-year warranty”). It has whatever terms its text defines, and it can be generous or stingy. The one thing it can never do is shrink the legal guarantee: “1 year manufacturer warranty” does not shorten your two-year statutory liability by a single day.
Practical consequence most merchants miss: “please contact the manufacturer” is not a lawful answer to a defect claim inside the legal guarantee. The customer chose their contract partner — you. You can pursue the manufacturer afterwards (your supplier recourse), but that’s your project, not the customer’s.
The reversed burden of proof — the 12 months that decide cases
If a defect shows up within 12 months of delivery (extended from 6 months in 2022; some EU countries apply the full two years), the law presumes the product was already defective at delivery — and it’s on you to prove otherwise. In practice, proving a five-month-old electronics failure was caused by the user is near-impossible and not worth the fight for standard cases.
Translation into policy: inside 12 months, dispute only clear user-damage cases (drop damage, water, visible abuse — which is why a photo or video at intake is worth so much). Outside 12 months, the burden flips to the customer, and your judgment calls get real.
What the customer can demand — in this order
- Repair or replacement (“cure”), and in principle the customer picks. You may refuse the option that’s disproportionately expensive — replacing a €400 device over a €15 part, say — and deliver the other one.
- Refund or price reduction, but only after cure has failed (typically after two failed attempts) or is unreasonable. A defect does not entitle the customer to an instant refund on first contact — and conversely, you can’t loop repairs forever.
- All of it free. Shipping both ways, parts, labor, your logistics — inside the legal guarantee every cent is on you. This is the mirror image of the withdrawal right, where the customer often pays the return — mixing up the two tracks (here’s that guide) means paying costs you don’t owe, or charging ones you may not.
Worth knowing for product strategy: EU rules increasingly push repair first — the 2026 right-to-repair framework nudges warranty cases toward repair over replacement, with incentives like extended coverage after a repair. For hardware brands with spare parts, repair-first is quietly becoming the margin-friendly and compliant default.
Edge cases that reach every inbox
- Used / refurbished goods: the liability period can be shortened to one year in several countries (Germany included) — but only with an explicit agreement, not a line hidden in the terms.
- B2B buyers: the consumer protections don’t apply; warranty terms can be limited contractually.
- “But it was on sale”: discounts change nothing about defect liability.
- Wear parts: batteries and consumables age; normal wear is not a defect. The line is whether the part underperformed reasonable expectations — a battery dead after four months is a defect case, not wear.
Running defect tickets so they stop eating margin
For a hardware brand the legal side is only half the cost. The other half is process — a defect case touches diagnosis, purchase-date check, the repair/replace decision, a label, possibly a replacement order, and the shop backend. Ours used to run across a helpdesk, a spreadsheet and the shop — eleven, twelve minutes per case (the ONNOA & LOVETALES numbers). The fix was the same as everywhere in post-purchase:
- Structured intake. Ask for order number, symptom, and a photo/video up front — one templated request, not three email round-trips.
- Automatic date math. Delivery date → inside 12 months? Inside two years? Inside a voluntary warranty? That determines the track before a human ever reads the ticket.
- A written decision policy. Under which conditions do you repair, replace, refund — including the cost thresholds. If it’s written down, a system (or a new hire) can execute it; if it lives in the founder’s head, the founder stays in the inbox.
- Execution in one pass. Label, replacement order, shop update, customer message — one flow, one audit trail.
That’s the category where we kept human approval the longest at our own brands — warranty judgment calls deserve it — but the intake, the date math and the execution never needed a human at all. The live demo shows how that looks on a real case from your store.
This article is a practical overview for merchants, not legal advice. National implementations differ in the details — have your warranty texts and terms reviewed by a lawyer.