Episode Summary
In this episode of The Expat Files, Johnny Mueller dives into the world of warranties and consumer rights in Latin America. He discusses the differences in warranty practices between Latin America and the first world, highlighting that while products come with guarantees, these are typically shorter and less comprehensive than in the first world. He uses examples such as a Volkswagen Jetta and an LG Plasma TV to illustrate the disparity, noting that warranties in Latin America often cover only a fraction of the coverage available in the first world. Johnny also touches on the cultural and business practices that contribute to these differences, including the idea that some retailers may prefer to offer lower warranties to avoid losing sales to competitors.
Johnny recounts his experiences with faulty electronics and power tools in Latin America, highlighting the challenges of warranty service and the prevalence of subpar tools. He describes how a TV set was damaged by a cleaning lady hanging wet laundry on it, leading to its eventual failure. He also discusses the common practice of sharing power drills on construction sites, which results in their rapid deterioration. Johnny contrasts the reliability of warranty service from first-world franchises like Ace Hardware and Walmart with the unreliable service from local retailers, emphasizing the importance of receipts and original packaging for warranty claims. He concludes by advising expats to prioritize purchasing from first-world franchises and to keep receipts for warranty repairs.
In this segment, Johnny Mueller discusses practical tips for expats living in Latin America regarding appliance warranties, user manuals, and computer repairs. He emphasizes the importance of keeping original boxes and manuals, especially in Spanish, and suggests downloading English manuals from manufacturer websites. He also addresses the issue of warranty coverage for appliances and electronics purchased in the U.S. and moved to Latin America, highlighting the need to contact customer service beforehand and keep documentation. Finally, he offers advice on computer repairs, suggesting that users should attempt basic troubleshooting before seeking help from local repair shops.
Johnny Mueller provides advice on how to restore a computer to a previous working state using system restore functions or a rescue disk. He emphasizes the importance of creating a rescue disk or using the built-in Windows system restore feature to avoid the hassle and potential data loss of taking a computer to a repair shop. He also warns about the risks of formatting a hard drive, which can lead to data loss and the need to reinstall all software and files.
In this segment, Johnny Mueller discusses the importance of having an external hard drive for backing up computer data, especially in the context of potential hardware failures or theft. He emphasizes the value of portable hard drives, noting that they are affordable and can save users from significant data loss. He also contrasts the warranty guarantees available in the first world versus Latin America, highlighting the shorter guarantees in the latter region. Furthermore, he critiques extended warranties as a revenue stream for retailers rather than a necessary expense for consumers, while acknowledging that in some regions, such as Latin America, consumers may benefit more from these warranties due to lower product reliability and higher rates of damage.
In this segment, Johnny Mueller discusses the challenges expats face when dealing with warranties and product reliability in Latin America. He advises against purchasing extended warranties due to the high cost of shipping damaged items back to manufacturers, especially when they are located far from the region. He highlights that some products, like Stanley tools, Snap-On tools, and certain kitchenware, come with lifetime guarantees, but these often require the consumer to send the item back for repair, which is impractical. Johnny also recommends sticking to well-known, common brand names when purchasing electronics or appliances, as they are more likely to be supported by local repair shops. He warns against buying cheap Chinese knockoffs or house brands, as they are often difficult to repair and can be a financial burden if they break down.
Topics
Warranty and guarantee practices in Latin America, Cultural and business practices affecting consumer rights, Consumer experiences with imported versus locally manufactured products, Warranty service in Latin America, Power tool usage and maintenance, Expat experiences with consumer electronics, Challenges of living in a third-world environment, Appliance Warranties, User Manuals, Warranty Coverage for Imported Electronics, Computer Repairs in Latin America, Computer restoration, System restore, Rescue disk, Computer repair shops, Data loss
Chapters
00:00:00 Opening 00:01:04 Introduction to the topic of warranty differences 00:01:06 Example of a Volkswagen Jetta warranty difference 00:01:44 Explanation of why warranty differences exist 00:05:03 The TV That Was Damaged by Laundry 00:05:20 The TV's Warranty and the Car Dealer's Mention of Power Drills 00:05:40 The Power Drill Sharing Practice on Construction Sites 00:07:22 Warranty Service from First-World Franchises 00:08:11 The Challenges of Warranty Service from Local Retailers 00:09:44 The Rule of Original Boxes and Manuals for Small Appliances 00:10:11 User Manuals in Spanish and Accessing English Versions 00:10:53 Warranty Coverage for Imported Electronics 00:13:09 Computer Repairs and the Importance of Troubleshooting 00:14:29 Introduction to System Restore 00:15:15 Creating a Rescue Disk 00:15:59 Windows System Restore Function 00:16:59 Risks of Taking a Computer to a Repair Shop 00:19:25 The Need for Backup Solutions 00:20:12 Warranties and Guarantees 00:22:00 Extended Warranties and Retailer Practices 00:24:34 Avoid Extended Warranties in Latin America 00:24:49 Lifetime Warranties and Their Practicality 00:26:04 Stick to Common Brand Names for Electronics and Appliances 00:26:54 Avoid Cheap Chinese Knockoffs and House Brands
Transcript
Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.
[00:12] Hi everybody, I'm Johnny Mueller, and you're listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America, the one of a kind show that tells you what it's like to live, work, play, and or retire in Latin America, so let's get started. Now I'm going to talk about something completely different, something I bet you've never heard talked about before. Now it's always important that when you buy something new, you get a guarantee or a warranty with it. And down here in Latin America, when you buy a product, whether it's imported or manufactured down here, you always get a guarantee or a warranty. But here's the catch. Anything that you buy that's imported, whether it's a computer, a car, a toaster, or a hand drill, I guarantee that the guarantee will not be as long or cover nearly as much of
[01:00] the item than if you bought the very same product up in the first world. Now let me give you an example of this. Now suppose you bought a brand new Volkswagen Jetta up in the first world, and it comes with a three year, 100,000 mile warranty on it. And up north, that's pretty standard in the industry. Now suppose you're down in Chile, and you're at a Volkswagen dealership, and you bought that very same Volkswagen Jetta. In fact, the same color, the same options, the same everything. Well down here, you're going to get a two year, 50,000 kilometer warranty. And that's very deceiving too, and even worse than it sounds, because 50,000 kilometers works out to only 32,000 miles. Not nearly as good as that three year, 100,000 mile guarantee that you get up in the first world for the exact same thing. It's no mistake, and the dealer's not trying to pull a scam, because if you look at the
[01:51] car that you bought down in Chile, it's printed in black and white, two years, 50,000 kilometers. But the manual and the glove compartment in the car that you bought up in Chicago, for example, says as you'd expect, three years, 100,000 miles. Now let's take for example, an LG Plasma TV, which you get a two year warranty on, if you buy it up in the first world. However, if you buy the exact same TV, down at one of the retail outfits in Argentina, you'll get a one year guarantee. And worse yet, if you buy the very same TV in Peru, in most retail electronics shops, they'll only give you that six month guarantee. And I've seen that happen even when it says right on the box that you get a one year guarantee from the manufacturer. And if you take that product right up to the cashier and buy it, they'll stamp right on
[02:37] your receipt, guaranteed or warrantied for six months. And when you point out to the person at the checkout counter, that it says right on the box one year guarantee, they just shrug their shoulders and say, that's our policy, we only give six months. Now, sometimes if you're in a stewed buyer, you can shop around in the very same city and find a tienda and the word tienda means retail store in Spanish. Anyway, you'll find some store that'll sell you that very same TV with a one year guarantee. And you see that a lot with computers too and computer accessories. And if you were to go back to the first store and ask for the manager and try to negotiate a better guarantee and explain to him that you found that very same product across town with a one year guarantee, double what he's giving and then explain that you'd like to buy it from him as long as he'd give you the same deal.
[03:25] Well, the chances are you won't have any luck at all. So it turns out they'd rather lose the sale than to give you the very same guarantee that some other retailer in the same city is offering. So the bottom line is you might be able to negotiate the price, but you won't negotiate the warranty. So now, of course, you're wondering how they could give you such a scaled back warranty, whereas in the first world for the same product, you can get double or even triple the amount. Now a while back, this was kind of a crusade of mine, especially when I was out to buy a new car. And I asked the same question to a lot of car repair people, car dealers, retailers, and people in electronics repair. And you know, none of them could give me a straight answer. Mostly, they just gave me a blank stare and said, well, that's the way it is. Down here we do things differently than in the first world. But I did get a bit of a psychological clue when I talked to one car dealer.
[04:13] He said, you know, 20 or 30 years ago, we offered no guarantees at all, no matter what the first world did. And when competition came along, we started to offer small guarantees and warranties and found out it really was good marketing and increased our business. And now everybody's doing it and people are used to it. So we're obliged to give him some kind of warranty coverage or they'll go somewhere else. And then he said, you know, the public should be lucky that we give him any warranties or guarantees at all because everybody knows that the gringos take care of their things and the Latins don't. And you know, when he said that, I knew he hit the nail right on the head. And I said, you know what, but that shouldn't make any difference with a big screen TV or a power drill. Those things are nothing like cars. They just sit on your shelf and you turn them on and off, right? And he said, you want to bet my brother had a very nice big screen TV that blew out in
[05:01] about seven months. And that probably was because during the rainy season, the cleaning lady used to hang wet laundry on it when it was too wet outside to use the clothesline. And she used to watch her soap operas, telly novellas that is, with socks draped over it. And man, that TV got hot. And I knew that couldn't have been good for it. Then one day it started smoking and fizzled out, but it was under warranty. And then the car dealer said to me, you mentioned power drills. Let me tell you something about power drills. Did you ever go to a construction site and watch how guys down here use power drills? And I said, well, yeah. I have. But what do you mean? Am I missing something here? Well he said, did you ever watch a guy on the third floor of a building dangle his drill by the cord and drop it down to the second floor so his buddy could use it?
[05:48] Because remember, this is Latin America and there just might be one power drill on that whole construction site. So on any given day, practically everyone on the job site wants a crack at it. And you know, the guy on the floor below doesn't always catch it either. So under those conditions, how long can you expect a drill like that to last? A couple months? A half year maybe? Even if it's a really high quality one. And the high quality ones down here, the average construction guy can never afford. So they use those junky generic brands from Mexico and China. And then the guy added, you should look at one of these guys' power drills up close. Did you ever notice where the top part is? The hard casing facing you. The place where your thumb is when you're drilling on something. Well it's almost always battered and dented and scratched.
[06:34] Either from being dropped too many times on a concrete floor, or some guy uses it as a hammer to beat on a crooked door frame, or straighten out a piece of rebar, or break a cinder block in half when he didn't have the right tool. Down here, they're famous for using the wrong tool. Anything goes if you don't have the right one. And you know, that's when I began to understand why the car dealers said, customers are lucky to get any warranties or guarantees at all. And you know, I've been down here long enough to have some things break on me while they were actually covered under warranty. So I've had a chance to see if these retail outfits are good for their word. So let me tell you first, if you need warranty service, on anything that you buy from a first world franchise down here like Ace Hardware or Walmart or Office Depot, well in that case you get exactly the very same kind of warranty service that you get from those places up
[07:22] in the first world. And in my experience with those places, it's been no problem at all really, and you never have to argue with them. As long as it's within a warranty period, they take the product back, no questions asked. And because down here in the third world, sometimes you'll find out that a product that you bought that has broken under warranty is no longer stocked anymore, or is on such a long back order that nobody knows just when it's going to come in again. Like for example, a certain blender model or DVD player. Now I've found in cases like that, where they don't have that product in stock anymore, often times they no longer have repair parts for that item at their maintenance facility either. And in that case, they're glad to give you an in-store credit. But here's the rub, if you buy something from a local retailer or a mom and pop shop,
[08:09] let's say you buy a weed whacker or a toaster. Well if one of those things breaks within its warranty period, there's a good chance you'll be out of luck. And even if you got the receipt and the warranty card right in your hand, they'll agree with you that the product is under warranty, but they'll tell you they can't repair it themselves. And instead, they'll often refer you to the manufacturer or the Latin American distributor, which could very well be in Argentina, Brazil or Mexico, and you're 600 miles away in Peru where you bought the thing. And if you're in that catch-22, forget about wrapping it up and sending it off to a repair facility in another country, or even in the same country if it's quite a distance away. Since general mail service, though very cheap, is quite undependable, and if you send your weed whacker off to a warranty repair station by local mail service general delivery, you'll
[08:58] probably never see it again. But there's always UPS, FedEx, and a lot of other private, guaranteed delivery services. And they really do get your packages delivered safe and on time. However, first-world delivery services like FedEx are so expensive that you're probably better off buying a brand new toaster, or was it a weed whacker? I forget. And another thing, if you're down here and you buy a product that has a warranty, it'll come with all those registration cards that you have to fill out and mail in. At least that's what you're supposed to do, and it says all that in Spanish, which makes things a hell of a lot worse for a newbie expat. But the good news is, you don't have to fill out those warranty cards and send all that junk to some far-off warranty center. All you need down here for warranty repair is the receipt and usually the original box, and that's important.
[09:44] And don't ask me why. But I haven't told that on a number of occasions. And that's pretty much a rule for all small appliances like Cuisinarts and microwave ovens and blenders. Unfortunately, I learned by trial and error, if I would have brought the item under warranty in and the original box and all the junk and accessories that came with it, they would have simply given me a brand new one other than making me wait a month to get my old one repaired. So save those original boxes. And I should mention something about user's manuals here. When you buy electronic stuff and appliances down here, you'll normally get that user's manual in Spanish. And unless you buy a really, really popular brand name, those big, fat, multi-language owner's manuals really aren't available much down here yet. Though I am seeing more and more, especially with TVs and DVD players.
[10:31] Anyway, don't worry if your Spanish sucks and all you've got is an owner's manual in Spanish. Just go to Google and plug in the manufacturer, the appliance, and the model number, and download that manual in English right off the manufacturer's website. And it's free. And they all do that now, you know. Then you can go ahead and file that manual away with all the other manuals that you'll never read. Now, another thing you expat wannabes might be wondering is, what if you have some appliances or TVs or computers or even a car that you bought up north that's still under warranty and you're going to move down here to Latin America with that stuff, what happens when something breaks or goes wrong? Well, what about that warranty? Is it still good down here? And where do you take it to find out? Well, I can tell you that in the vast majority of cases, even if the thing you bought is
[11:20] only one week old and it's got the full warranty left, if you didn't purchase it down here at one of the local electronics or appliance stores, they probably won't cover it. And even if they know they're supposed to, they'll try to give you a hard time about it and lop on some extra charges if they can get away with it. But one very smart expat friend of mine found that there's a way to get warranty coverage down here in just those kinds of cases. And he made some careful plans even before he came down. He had a Sears washer and dryer combo and a Samsung plasma TV that was still under warranty up in the States. And he went on the Sears website and he sent an email to customer service and asked that very question whether or not he was going to have his full warranty service when he moved down to Panama. And customer service sent an email back saying that he would have warranty coverage worldwide
[12:09] as long as he brought his warranty paperwork down and his original receipt to one of the Sears authorized repair stations, of which there were quite a few in Central America. And he sent the same kind of email to customer service for Samsung for his laptop and LCD TV. And he got the same response and found out he had worldwide warranty coverage. And of course those customer service replies had the names of the customer service person and the phone number and the department and everything he needed in case the service center down here refused to honor his warranty. And you know what, his Sears dryer did end up raking and he went to the nearest service center and they hemmed and hawed until he pulled out that scanned letter from customer service up in the States. And a day later he got a phone call from the maintenance department saying that his broken
[12:56] item was under full warranty. But my ex-pat friend knew if he didn't have that email copy in his hand, there would have been a completely different outcome. And while I'm on the subject of getting repairs down here, whether under warranty or not, let me talk about computers for a second. Now everybody knows if you have a computer long enough, in due time you're going to need some repair on it. Whether it's caught a virus and it's running too slow, it crashes and dies out right, or it's just doing odd and funny things in general. Well down here, just like cafe internets have sprouted up like mushrooms, little mom and pop computer sales and repair shops are practically everywhere. And of course they're really not mom and pop shops, because your average mom and pop down here doesn't know a thing about computers, let me tell you. Instead, little computer shops like that are usually staffed by young boys and their late
[13:43] teens who sit around all day playing computer ninja games until some desperate sucker like me walks in with his broken computer. Well here's a little hint for those of you having computer problems. Before you let your computer loose with one of these guys, you should make yourself familiar with an excellent internal repair tool that every computer has called a restore command. Repeat, it's called a restore command. In other words, what I'm saying is that you should try to fix your computer first before you give up on it and decide to bring it down to one of those repair guys. And there are a few simple things that you might do that could completely clear up your problem, even if you don't know diddly about computers. Now your antivirus, whether it's Kaspersky or Norton or whatever, has its own restore function and it works very well.
[14:29] If your computer's on the blink but not screwed up so bad that it doesn't work at all anymore. In other words, if you still have the basic functions working on your computer and whatever glitches or problems you have aren't so massive, you can restore your computer to a previous date using your antivirus restore commands. So normally, you'll have a CD somewhere or a USB with your computer's restore information on it. And by the way, sometimes it's called a rescue disk, which at some time or another, your antivirus software prompted you to make, which I'm sure you probably never did. But of course you were supposed to. So my advice to you is right now, or after you're done listening to me, is click on your antivirus program, go to the main menu and click on tools, and then click on make a rescue
[15:15] disk and make that disk or put it on USB. Just follow the instructions because you'll need that if your computer crashes or starts screwing up. And that will allow your computer to reconfigure to an earlier date when things were working well, let's say two weeks ago or a month ago or whenever you made that rescue disk. And I've done it myself so I know it works, and it saved me a lot of trips to the computer repair shop. And I'll tell you, you don't want to go there if you don't have to because most of these guys don't speak English. And even if your Spanish is pretty good, you probably don't know half of the technical terms that these guys are going to throw at you when they're talking about your computer. I'm just trying to save you a trip and some grief here, okay? So do try that system restore function before you go run into the computer store. And of course, if you have Microsoft Windows, they have a very good system restore function
[16:03] built right in their programming too. And I've used that too and it works fine. And you don't need to make a restore disk ahead of time because the Windows software itself continually makes copies of certain parts of your system and keeps them in a file or register. So if you need to, you can tell the computer to go back to a previous date when things were running much smoother. And here's how you use it. All you do is click on the start icon, go to Programs, click on Accessories, click on System Tools, click on System Restore, and a window will come up and walk you right through it. And on the screen will be a regular calendar. And there'll be a number of restore dates from the past. And you can select one of those dates and have your computer completely restored back to that moment in time. But it's important to pick a time in the past that you remember the computer was running
[16:51] quite well. Like before you downloaded some big suspicious file, or installed a new software program with a lot of hang ups and glitches in it. And the reason why I'm mentioning all of this is because almost any time you bring a sick computer into a repair shop, they'll screw around with it a while, run an antivirus, tell you to come back in a few hours, then when you go back they'll tell you it had some kind of terrible virus or flaw, or they can't fix it without formatting your hard disk. And if you know anything at all about computers you know what that means, you've lost everything. That's what formatting does, it completely wipes your hard disk clean. And that means you'll have to reinstall all your programs and your files and start over. That's fine, and it usually works great, but the problem is, you or somebody else will
[17:36] have to reload every single program you've got back into the thing and all your files and data that you didn't save on an external hard drive or a big fat USB will be lost forever. So that's why I always recommend trying to restore your system to a previous date. A date when you were certain your computer wasn't screwing up. And another hint here, usually I've found what often causes a computer to go on the blink, besides downloading a questionable file from the internet, one that slips right past your firewall and your antivirus software. That kind of thing happens a lot especially when your antivirus suspects something and alerts you and you let it through anyway. But what I've found out in my own case, that when my computer seems to go bad, it's always
[18:22] after I've just installed a brand new software program. And I'm sure that's happened to a lot of you people out there, especially when a friend of yours gives you a program that for example you didn't originally buy, or you download some shareware or free software and suddenly bad things start happening. Like for example that blue screen of death, have you ever had that one? I have and it ain't pretty. Anyway if you take your computer to one of these repair shops, chances are they're going to want to format your disk because in most cases it's much easier for them to format your disk, wipe it clean and reinstall all your software than it is for them to diagnose problems in existing software, which could really be a time consuming pain in the ass. I'd say in at least half the cases when they format your disk, they're taking the lazy
[19:10] man's way out. And to me that's just a computer repairman's version of doing a c-section and I'm sure some of you ladies out there will know what I mean. But how is the average guy to know that? Anyway if they end up giving your hard drive a c-section, I mean if they format your disk, then if you use your computer as much as I do, you got about 6 or 8 hours of work ahead of you reinstalling all your programs and files from your external hard drive. That is if you do have one of those little external hard drives, which I absolutely recommend for everyone who's got a computer. Personally I have two 500 gigabyte external hard drives, they're only about as big as a cigarette pack. And not only are they perfect for restoring your system and everything in it in case someone steals your laptop, or maybe you really have to get your hard drive formatted, or you buy
[19:56] a new computer. And unfortunately in all three of those cases you'll have to start from scratch. So I repeat, get yourself one of those 500 gigabyte external hard drives. They plug right into a USB port, and down here even in Latin America, they're under a hundred bucks. And now I'm coming back around to my main point, the question of warranties and guarantees. I'll bet you never thought I'd get back to that did you? Well anyway, when you buy one of these tiny 500 gigabyte USB hard drives, they come with a two year guarantee up in the first world. But down here in Latin America, when you buy the very same thing, you're lucky to get a six month guarantee. In fact, most of the time, they only give you 90 days. Hmm... But luckily, those things almost never go bad, unless you drop them on the floor or
[20:42] use them for a hockey puck. And there's a real revelation, I actually quizzed the guy at the computer store as to why there was only a six month guarantee, even though it said two years right on the box. And he said, well, that's because people drop them on the ground all the time. Surprise, surprise. Now, if you don't have a backup of your files available on a little portable hard drive like that, or a big fat USB, like eight or 16 gigabytes, anyway, those guys at the computer store can take your screwed up computer and usually extract your files and archives, even if you don't have a backup hard drive, usually. But if your computer's had a catastrophic failure or the hard drive is screwed up, that might not be possible. And if that happens, you might just take out your gun and put one in the chamber, depending,
[21:29] of course, on what you lost in that computer. So I repeat, get yourself a portable mini hard drive, and get one of the big ones. 500 gigs, 750 gigs, a tetra byte, or even two tetras. They're cheap and they'll save you a world of grief. And don't forget to backup your system, your archives, and your files on it at least once a month. That's what it's for. And I mention this fully knowing that at least half of you won't take my advice. That is, not unless your computer crashes and you lose all your data. And unfortunately, that's when we all get religion. Now since I'm talking about warranties and guarantees, I want to talk a minute about the extended warranty. You know, that contract they offer when you buy a TV or appliance, they cost you 20 or even 50 extra bucks, and that's to extend your original warranty a year or two more.
[22:14] Now normally, if you're an avid reader of Consumer Reports magazine, or you've actually investigated extended warranties on the internet, you'll find that they're almost never worthwhile and it's a waste of money. But it's a real good way for a retailer to pump up his earnings. And I'll tell you why. If you know anything about quality control, every single manufacturer runs what they call a burn-in test on all other products, especially electronic products and appliances. And for example, the makers of a plasma TV know that once in a while their product's going to fail practically right out of the box, that is, within the first few times you turn it on. But the manufacturer also knows that after a product has been in use for a while, let's say 24 hours to a week, which they call the burn-in period, 99% of those products that
[23:03] make it through that burn-in period are extremely reliable and won't fail for years and years and years. And that's why your grandma still has an old Kelvinator refrigerator down in the basement since 1952, still cooling Grandpa's beer and his deer meat from The Last Hunt. You think your Chinese Blu-ray DVD player is going to last one-tenth as long? I doubt it. Anyway, extended warranties cover that period anywhere from one to three years after you've bought a new product, which according to burn-in statistics, will almost never fail in the first few years anyway. So when a retailer sells that kind of insurance, and technically it is a kind of insurance, retailers almost never lose. But in this case I'm talking about first world conditions. When you talk about third world conditions, things are slanted a bit more, a lot more
[23:50] in fact, in favor of the buyer or consumer. So for the Latin consumer down here, who doesn't take very good care at all of his possessions, and who's in some cases downright abusive to the stuff, and a case in point is the cleaning lady who put that wet laundry on that plasma TV. Anyway, it could be an even bet for a Latin consumer. Because in general, things down here, especially electronic things, and things with moving parts like appliances, just don't have the life expectancy that the same item does up in the first world. Not when they're in the hands of the average Latin person. But as far as expats living down here, and expat wannabes, you've carried your first world habits down here with you, including the way you take care of things. So in general, for you, it's not a good idea to buy an extended warranty.
[24:38] And that goes for if you're up in Cleveland, or down here in La Paz, Bolivia. Oh, and I should mention, there are some products that are known worldwide that actually have lifetime guarantees on them. So what's up with that? For example, if you buy a Stanley Hammer or Saw, or tools from Snap-On or Sears, even Kingston USB memory devices have a lifetime guarantee. And it's stamped right on the package. And that goes for certain kitchen utensils too, like plates and corning ware and pots and pans. A lot of times, people buy that stuff just because it says lifetime warranty. Well, unfortunately, I've found out the hard way that when something has a lifetime warranty, almost all of the time, the manufacturer will honor that warranty. But if you read the fine print, it usually says you'll have to save the receipt and send
[25:26] the broken item back to the manufacturer, which is usually thousands of miles away from Latin America. So you've got that problem once again, of the cost of shipping it. Because it's not worth the 40 bucks UPS will charge you for sending back some Stanley Wrenches only worth 30 bucks. That's crazy. But there is a rule of thumb when it comes to lifetime warranties. Generally, anybody who stamps that on a product knows that the thing is pretty rugged, and it'll stand a lot of abuse. So you really can't go wrong when you buy something that does make that claim. Especially down here in the third world. And here's another tip when you buy electronic products or motorized tools or household appliances down here. Always buy brand names that you're familiar with and that are in general use up in the United States. Now, I'm not necessarily talking about high-end brands, really expensive stuff.
[26:14] For example, Bosch Drills from Germany, Snap-on Tools, KitchenAid, or Cuisinart. What I mean is the more common the brand name, like Samsung, LG, or Panasonic, the more parts they stock for items like that in Latin American appliance repair shops. And of course, if you do have an oddball high-end electronic item, like a clipshorn speaker or a Bang & Olufsen stereo, they can fix that stuff down here all right, but they're not going to have the parts. So they'll have to be ordered off the internet, and everything's going to take a lot longer and be a lot more expensive. So stick with the usual suspects and you'll be just fine. But here, I also have to warn you against buying cheap Chinese knockoffs and house brands, especially when it comes to electronics and appliances. You know what I'm talking about. Up in the first world, you can always go into an appliance or electronics store and find
[27:03] an item that's nearly identical to a high-priced brand that has a funny house label on it that you've never heard of before. And it seems like this stuff always comes from China. So just a warning to you expat wannabes up there. If you bring down your house brand DVD and plasma screen TV, Acme, Sing Young, Young Sing, or whatever, those things are orphans, and when they finally break, there's no point in even trying to get them fixed. So when they do break, if they're heavy, you might want to use them as an anchor for your boat. You've been listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America, and don't forget you can email me on anything at all about Latin America. That's the expat files at gmail.com. That's the expat files at gmail.com.
[27:51] See you next time. Nos vemos.