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DVD warranty
Hi,
one of my 2007 clients called and said that his DVD is skipping. I do have a backup, but do people include “DVD warranty” into the Contracts? I would appreciate if you share the wording. Thanks! -
12 Replies
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Perhaps someone else will chime in with the more legalese type answer you’re looking for, but perhaps my common sense opinion will help some in the meantime. Since it took your client 4 years to complain about the skipping DVD, chances are the DVD you delivered was just fine and the 4 years worth of dirt and scratches on the disc and/or your client’s faulty DVD player are making it skip all the sudden. So, you might just explain that to him/her so they’re not calling you back every few years. Then, depending on whether it’s a repeat client and how generous a mood you’re in when he/she calls, you might also burn another couple copies for him/her either for the nominal costs of the blank discs and the time they take to burn or just as a kindly favor.
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Disc can fail all the time.
We just send em out another no charge.Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta LLC -
[David Johnson] “burn another couple copies for him/her either for the nominal costs of the blank discs and the time they take to burn or just as a kindly favor.”
Go the favor route whenever possible. It makes little sense to have someone resenting the fact that you expect $10 for a DVD dub when they may have the potential of throwing a multi-thousand dollars job your way in the future. My exception to this is when instead of a single tiny request there’s a constant stream of tiny requests. That’s when we add them to our timesheets and invoice the cumulative time monthly.
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I don’t necessarily disagree with anything Nick or Chris said … just worded my reply the way I did because if, for example, you send out hundreds of discs every month and have many dozens of clients, once the precedent of replacing every one of those discs for free after clients have tossed them around for a few years is established, it’s difficult for me to understand how you and/or your staff would be able to do anything other than print discs all day every day … for free. Seems to me that would no longer be a “business”.
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To avoid being continually taken advantage of for free dubs, you should ask for them to send back the defective disk before they get a replacement, so you can analyze the defective product. You might even actually perform that analysis.
You should probably offer free 1 for 1 replacement for a year, to cover any bad batches of blank media you accidentally buy. If it is going to fail in a serious way, it will probably do so within the year. You can’t warrantee a disk that may be kept long-term in bad conditions or otherwise abused. Disks that are based on dyes are going to be less durable than those stamped from a glass master. That was the trade-off for the cost savings and instant turn-around.
If you buy only the very best long-duration archival quality media, you can extend the warranty and use this as a marketing point.
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I don’t have an explicit warranty for discs, but for projects like trade show loops etc that the client only gets one disc I usually give them three. That way they have some spares. Discs are cheap.
If they called 4 years later, I’d just make them another copy. Someone else mentioned getting the old disc back. Good idea, but in this case I wouldn’t bother since it is most likely wear and tear on the disc that is the problem.
Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.comI have a system, it has stuff in it, and stuff hooked to it. I have a camera, it can record stuff. I read the manuals, and know how to use this stuff and lots of other stuff too.
You should be suitably impressed… -
The follow up question is…what are you all using for the long term storage of the DVD? A backup archive on a computer or an actual dvd, or something else?
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“Disks that are based on dyes are going to be less durable than those stamped from a glass master.” What if my master DVD has a problem? I have no problem to burn another copy for the client, I just afraid that after a few years my backups could have same issues as my clients’ DVDs.
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Richard,
“The follow up question is…what are you all using for the long term storage of the DVD? A backup archive on a computer or an actual dvd, or something else?”Not sure if this is aimed at me, or not.
But the encoding files to burn a client DVD are not very big, so I just keep them and the project on the HD when I’m done. So if I need another copy I just open the project in DVD Studio Pro and I’m off to the races.Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.comI have a system, it has stuff in it, and stuff hooked to it. I have a camera, it can record stuff. I read the manuals, and know how to use this stuff and lots of other stuff too.
You should be suitably impressed… -
We’ve gotten in the habit of making disc images of the finished DVD along with a hard copy on the shelf. Storing that along with the label information makes for quick retrieval. These are stored both on and off-site.
Steve
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