[danielrhodes]

This reminds me of when I went in to a Patagonia store to repair a jacket with a “lifetime” warranty. Turns out they define lifetime as the “useful” lifetime of the product, which is a couple years. They refused to help and instead tried to sell me a new jacket.

[daft_pink]

You should definitely try a different store or employee. I’ve heard nothing but great things about the patagonia lifetime warranty.

[matrix2003]

I forget who owns Black Diamond, but they're kind of similar.

They haven't fully replaced the product, but what is cool is that they have a repair shop that has been doing free repairs for me. I've sent a very lightweight, very heavily used puffy jacket in twice for repairs at no charge.

Realistically I know that jacket isn't going to last forever, but I respect they are at least trying to help me extract as much life out of it as I can from a sustainability perspective.

[hunter2_]

It's using less material and less landfill, but I wonder if it really is more sustainable in the grand scheme of things, at the scale of clothing and similarly sized items. The additional round trip shipping and workshop operations (HVAC, lighting, commuting, etc.) could potentially exceed the footprint of just sending you a replacement right off the production line. Obviously there's a crossover point above which this couldn't possibly be (cars, etc.) but it's probably a very blurry line, and I wouldn't be surprised if some companies knowingly take the worse but ostensibly sustainable option, i.e. greenwashing, for the resulting brand loyalty and word of mouth advertising.

[z0r]

Both companies were founded by Yvon Chouinard

[ApolloFortyNine]

Darn tough socks still honor their lifetime warranty no matter how long passes, though obviously no socks can last forever. Generally reading online you find people mentioning you should be reasonable about it.

[red_trumpet]

> you should be reasonable about it.

I don't get it. Shouldn't it be the seller's obligation to give a reasonable lifetime estimate? Like, give me a five year warranty, if you want to advertise your socks last for five years of regular use. Don't pretend it's unlimited when it isn't.

[mikestew]

Tilley hats as well. It was probably twenty years on, and both of ours fell apart enough to call about their lifetime (“put it in your will!”) warranty. Other than arguing that Tilley never made that model of hat, they sent us an equivalent without fuss.

[rvschuilenburg]

By that standard we would have "lifetime" warranty on everything sold in The Nederlands, since by law we require warranty as long as you can reasonably expect a product to last.

[fasa99]

My Tomtom GPS is like this. I have an older model. "Lifetime maps". For many years, plug it in, new map, download done.

Eventually I try to update it and it says "oh no, do you want to buy a map!?". I mean. What? Doesn't even cost anything to the company to keep on giving me free maps - well I guess it's lost revenue if that they could earn by dishonoring the agreement, which is what they did. Clearly meant to extract more money from me in map purchase or to buy another "lifetime" map.

I have another TomTom on my other vehicle (despite the shitty practices, their kit doesn't randomly crash like Garmin in my experience) which about every 2 days nags me about an update. So here I am, newer model is way too aggressive with updates all the time, old "lifetime map" model is a disaster.

What it is here, is there needs to be legislation that if a company uses "lifetime" or equivalent word in marketing, they are on the hook for life to honor that, with some prescribed action to make customers whole if they should want to drop it.

Now a good guy legend in this field, craftsman tools, for many decades in america people would buy craftsman from their sears knowing they could always go back easily and get a replacement. Sears in the day was like if Wal mart and amazon was the same company. An institution.

[widowlark]

I had nearly the opposite experience, getting a jacket of over 20 years replaced after I brought it in. You should go back and try again.

[elijaht]

Hmm that doesn't sound right. I just got a 10 year old jacket which had damage I had caused (so not normal wear and tear) for free

[lutorm]

The warranty is for the lifetime of the product. If it breaks, obviously its lifetime has ended so the warranty is no longer in effect...

[hunter2_]

Indeed, a reasonable person would find that its usefulness has tanked!

[TimSchumann]

Yeah this is odd.

I've taken multiple 10 year old T-Shirts with holes through 10% of them in to the Patagonia store and they've let me walk out with new product off the rack.

[CoastalCoder]

I wonder if you'd have luck in small claims court.

[BoringTimesGang]

This is how I got MSI to honour their warranty in spite of their stance that any failure at all is due to user error, since their products don't fail

[grecy]

LL Bean are the OG of this, and they will warranty stuff that is 25 years old without batting an eye

[cameldrv]

Not anymore. I had a pair of boots that one of the soles fell off of one day. They were about 20 years old but still in good shape except for the glue failure. I called up LL Bean and they said they had no record of the purchase (I didn’t have a receipt but I bought them directly from them). After I insisted I had bought from them they changed their tune to saying 20 years is long enough and I should know that glue on the soles of shoes fails after a while. I just wanted them to repair the boots but they refused, so I won’t be buying anything from them anymore.

[mPReDiToR]

Does Zippo predate that?

I think Leatherman have a similar warranty to Zippo, and they've been around a while, too.