Distributors play a huge role as they are basically the ones that somewhat bank-roll the introduction of the products to the country. Oftentimes, there’s only one distributor for an entire brand. Sometimes, if it’s a huge brand, there could be two distributors (Nokia has two huge distributors in the country).
Once the distributor orders in bulk and imports them from the home countries (normally it’s in Taiwan, China, South Korea or Japan), it will distribute the products to its network of dealers.
Sometimes, one of the dealers will also be asked by the brands to put up a concept store. So the next time you see a concept store by Asus, Samsung, Western Digital or Sony, try to figure out who’s the dealer behind the store.
Normally, dealers who run the concept stores get some marketing budget. Some would also get 50-50 share in the construction cost of the store itself.
For warranty, the dealers also serve as a de facto service center. This is the reason why if your device has a defect, you just need to bring it to the store you bought it (along with the receipt) for repairs or replacement.
The least a store can do is receive your item and then refer it to the distributor. This is the reason why sometimes it takes weeks before your product is inspected, repaired, serviced, replaced and returned. Depending on the capacity of the distributor, pick-ups and delivery to that store may only happen once or twice a week.
If the product line is already strong and the volume of units sold can justify it, the distributor will also put up its own stand-alone service center.
As such, to protect the business of the distributor and dealers, they will only receive items you actually bought from them. These are the units which are eligible for local warranty. Otherwise, they might also accept grey units but you’ll have to pay for it.
● The distributor is only responsible for specific products that it actually imported and sold to dealers. This is why serial numbers, warranty cards or ORs are used to track them.
● Distributors will incur cost for warranty claims. It could be from cost manpower for repairs, cost of shipments for returns and replacements or cost of parts.
● Products bought elsewhere are considered loss of sales opportunity for the distributor so not only do they not want to provide warranty for it, they also consider it competition.
● This is the reason why grey market units or parallel imports are way cheaper than the mall prices of the devices — the prices do not account for replacement warranty and they did not invest in infrastructure for repairs and services.
● So, even if your unit is still covered by international warranty, the local service center will eventually charge for repairs. This is the only way the local distributor can recoup and maintain operation of their business.
Most brands or manufacturers will offer international warranty if local warranty is not available. This means that wherever you bought your gadgets, it will be serviced, repaired or fixed by the international service center.
The international service center is usually stationed in regional hubs like Singapore, the United States or Japan.
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