Ideal promises to resuscitate DOAs

Distribution Warranty service includes seven-day turnaround.

Ideal Hardware is tackling the dead-on-arrival (DOA) issue by introducing a service which it claims it will turn around within seven days of delivery.

The distributor is confident that it can gain competitive advantage by providing improved warranty support to its resellers and has developed an advance replacement service for customers of its hard disk drives.

James Wickes, MD of Ideal, said the distributor will replace all DOAs within seven days of delivery to the reseller, for all resellers that sign up for the service. He insisted that signup was necessary for resellers to register details of faults and delivery requirements, and not tied to the amount of business done by the dealer.

Any hard drive that fails within one year of the warranty period will be advance replaced within 24 hours by a brand new drive. If it breaks down after one year, it will be replaced by a refurbished drive, said Steve Edwards, head of warranty at Ideal Hardware.

As for products that fall outside the warranty period, Ideal will replace or repair them, if appropriate, within five days of their return. If it cannot do either, it says it will tell the customer within five days.

Wickes said the service will ease the burden on resellers. 'They will save money and they don't have to take another model from their own stock,' he said.

Commenting on Ideal's DOA plans, one distributor commented: 'DOAs are something that distributors hate to deal with from a reseller perspective, as well as having to talk to vendors about it. It is one of those impossible things that are hard to consolidate with your Ts&Cs from many different parties.'

Wickes also told PC Dealer that Ideal will retain its 33 per cent stake in Cromwell Media and is using the association to develop an online ordering service for resellers. A limited rollout is due to commence next month.

As part of Ideal's overhaul of its dead on arrival policy, resellers have to pre-register with the distributor's call-collect service.

The distributor claimed that 90 per cent of resellers were pre-registered but said it wanted all of its resellers to be registered.