Prevue doesn’t want to replace damaged cage under warranty!

[Ezekiell]

So I’m a little annoyed. When we found that our Preevue travel carrier had minor damage to a panel we contacted Prevue requesting a replacement because it was still under warranty. Prevue have come back today and said they don’t ship international and won’t honour their warranty and replacement policy because we are in Australia. They told us to return it to Amazon for a whole replacement unit, which seems incredibly silly. Plus we still need it in 3 weeks when we get back from America and immediately go pick up Māui. And we can’t return to Amazon anyway because the return window has closed which is considerably less then the 90 day warranty!
I’ve asked Prevue directly to honour their warranty and ship the replacement panel to our family in the US whom we’ll be visiting for 2 week
from Saturday.
Has anyone else from Australia or elsewhere had issues such as this with products bought international arriving damaged?

EDIT: sorry everyone. I’m really overwhelmed by life stuff atm so I panicked a little bit. For anyone who lives international reference Prevue will honour their warranty but the problem is they prefer domestic shipping. They agreed to send out the replacement panel for us to our US families address but also mentioned that it could be possible to ship international if we agreed to pay the international shipping required by the UPS postal service.

 

[Smerft85]

So I’m a little annoyed. When we found that our Preevue travel carrier had minor damage to a panel we contacted Prevue requesting a replacement because it was still under warranty. Prevue have come back today and said they don’t ship international and won’t honour their warranty and replacement policy because we are in Australia. They told us to return it to Amazon for a whole replacement unit, which seems incredibly silly. Plus we still need it in 3 weeks when we get back from America and immediately go pick up Māui. And we can’t return to Amazon anyway because the return window has closed which is considerably less then the 90 day warranty!
I’ve asked Prevue directly to honour their warranty and ship the replacement panel to our family in the US whom we’ll be visiting for 2 week
from Saturday.
Has anyone else from Australia or elsewhere had issues such as this with products bought international arriving damaged?

EDIT: sorry everyone. I’m really overwhelmed by life stuff atm so I panicked a little bit. For anyone who lives international reference Prevue will honour their warranty but the problem is they prefer domestic shipping. They agreed to send out the replacement panel for us to our US families address but also mentioned that it could be possible to ship international if we agreed to pay the international shipping required by the UPS postal service.

No need for apologies, prevue gave my sister the runaround too!

 

[Scott]

That policy seems rather dodgy. While Prevue may prefer to ship replacement parts within the U.S, they sell globally via Amazon. If they insist on returning the entire cage to Amazon, it is not your fault the window is shorter than warranty period.

 

[Ezekiell]

That policy seems rather dodgy. While Prevue may prefer to ship replacement parts within the U.S, they sell globally via Amazon. If they insist on returning the entire cage to Amazon, it is not your fault the window is shorter than warranty period.

I agree which is why I panicked a bit when they told me to just send the entire carrier back to Amazon. I’m just lucky that we have family in the US and we are visiting soon allowing us to just take the replacement part back on the plane.
Honestly, I think it also helped that I quoted Australian consumer law which does include a clause for products bought from international companies online.

 

[noodles123]

Heck, if that was panic, then you are a very calm person lol. Nothing be be sorry about---that is a stupid policy. I am sure you would have PREFERRED a non-defunct product...lol....If "you break it, you buy it" applies to customers, merchants are also responsible when the product is already broken...

 

[Scott]

That policy seems rather dodgy. While Prevue may prefer to ship replacement parts within the U.S, they sell globally via Amazon. If they insist on returning the entire cage to Amazon, it is not your fault the window is shorter than warranty period.

I agree which is why I panicked a bit when they told me to just send the entire carrier back to Amazon. I’m just lucky that we have family in the US and we are visiting soon allowing us to just take the replacement part back on the plane.
Honestly, I think it also helped that I quoted Australian consumer law which does include a clause for products bought from international companies online.

Kudos for researching the appropriate law! Prevue may be unaware, or perhaps hopeful you would fail with due diligence!!

 

[dhraiden]

Not to defend them but it's not a reasonable policy to offer since there's tons of places in the world where the S&H isn't feasible, so they should be more careful about over-promising on things like this.... Australia is very, very far away Hopefully y'all will be able to work something out though.

 

[Ezekiell]

Not to defend them but it's not a reasonable policy to offer since there's tons of places in the world where the S&H isn't feasible, so they should be more careful about over-promising on things like this.... Australia is very, very far away Hopefully y'all will be able to work something out though.

They have shipped it to our family in the US so hopefully it'll arrive the last week we are there and we can just haul it back home on the plane. In case we've left before it arrives we're just going to give our family the postage money and they'll post it out to us, meantime I've clamped two huge SS washers over my glue repair in that corner as a stopgap.

Mind you, I don't agree about it being reasonable because of S&H costs. Prevue sells via amazon who collects the shipping - when we bought it through amazon we still had to pay the shipping as it was being sent from the US anyway. If we'd returned the whole unit to Amazon, Amazon would have paid for the return shipping (as we're not liable) and the shipping for a new product sent out from the US (again not liable).

Considering the Prevue warranty specifically states to not return the product if it arrives damaged and they don't want the damaged part sent back to them, just photo evidence that it's damaged, what they originally asked seemed incredibly dumb. If anything it was saving them money as they don't want the damaged bit returned! And even in the US they still have to pay the shipping for the replacement - albeit that's half the cost of international UPS but much better than 200% the cost that Amazon would have footed if we'd followed Prevues advice!

I weighed the side panel that needs replacing and the shipping cost would have been the amount of a medium-heavy regular package, say $25-35USD. I know this as our US family sometimes sends packages that weigh heavier than that panel and that's all they pay to ship out to Oz.
And that cost is about the same via UPS, which delivers to Australia! I've had many US packages that weight about the same as this single side panel shipped here via UPS for anywhere between $25-40USD.

In my books refusing to honour your warranty because the purchaser is on another continent is just plain terrible and a great way to lose customers you otherwise wouldn't have.