Question

Joe bought an oven from Menard's. The sales contract included a statement clearly disclaiming all implied or express warranties, which included the implied warranty of merchantability. The disclaimer was written in the identical size and color as the rest of the contract. The oven never worked right. Joe wanted a refund of the purchases price, claiming that Menard's had breached the implied warranty of merchantability. Can Joe get back the purchase price, although the warranty disclaimer was in the contract? Explain your answer! Must be at least 115 words.

Answer 1

So, warranties are basically used to provide better information about the working of the product. Many a times, seller has a better knowledge about the product (specially in second hand markets) and its working condition and that's why to signal to potential buyer that the product is infact a good quality product, warranty is used. The warranty can be explicit or implicit.

Explicit warranty: These are the written or any spoken claims (through tv ads) made by a seller either publically or through the sales contract. These provide a type of guarantee about the quality and other characteristics of the product. Because explicit warranties are generally recorded, these are relatively less complicated.

Implicit warranty: This is implied warranty of merchantability. It means that the product functions properly for a reasonablly well defined period of time. It basically means that the product perform its basic functional properly. In case of an oven for example, it should be able to maintain the desired level of temperature. These kind of guarantees however, are generally more tricky because these are unwritten and automatic protection provided by the state law.

There are some states which allow their merchants to sell the goods by disclaiming all kinds of warranties (both explicit and implied) in which case then, firms are not legally bound to refund the purchase price. However, many states do not allow for such a provision and in such a situation even when sales contract include a statement that clearly disclaim all implied or express warranties (including the implied warranty of merchantability) the consumer can fight the merchant in court.

Note that even if state provide merchants to sell the product without any kind of guarantee, the law of the land can vary from one state to another or even one situation to another. So whether Joe will get the purchase price or not depends on the law of the state where Joe resides.