IPL Warranty Terms: Two Years Standard, and What the Extension Costs

Short answer: our standard warranty is two years from delivery, on every platform. Three years costs five US dollars per unit, five years costs ten. The extension is a priced option, and it belongs on the quotation and the proforma invoice, not only in the catalogue.

Two years, and a ladder above it

One term for every platform beats a term that varies by model. A single number is easier to administer, easier to put in a contract, and easier for a brand to repeat to its own customers without checking which model they bought.

Cover	What it adds	Cost to the buyer
2 years	Standard term	Included in the unit price
3 years	One additional year	+5 USD per unit
5 years	Three additional years	+10 USD per unit

Two things about that table matter more than the numbers.

The extension is priced per unit, because the exposure is per unit. A brand ordering five hundred devices and a brand ordering fifty thousand are buying the same term but not the same liability, and a flat fee would be wrong for one of them.

The second is that the ladder applies to the same exclusion list as the base term. An extension that quietly widens what is covered is not an extension; it is a different product with a different price.

Why one number is worth more than a slightly better one

A term that moves is worse than a term that is a little short. Buyers compare quotations across suppliers, and a term that changed between two emails is the first thing they write down.

That is the whole argument for fixing the base at two years across the range. It is not the longest warranty in the market and it is not meant to be. It is the one that can be repeated identically by a salesperson, a proforma invoice, a manual and a customer, which is what a warranty is actually for.

Why the extension belongs on the quote

A catalogue states what is available. A quotation states what is being sold. If the extension only appears in the catalogue, the buyer finds it after the price is agreed, and the conversation turns into a negotiation about something that should have been a line item.

So the quotation carries three things: the base term, the optional extension with its per-unit price, and the exclusion list by reference. The proforma invoice repeats whichever option the buyer chose, in the same words.

That is the difference between a claim and an argument later. A PI that says “5 years, +10/unit” settles in one email. A PI that says nothing, plus a catalogue that mentions five years, settles after three exchanges.

A brand can sell the extension as its own SKU

Once the brand owns the customer relationship, the extension is a retail product. Add a separate SKU in the brand’s own store, price it above what the extension costs at the factory, and the coverage becomes a margin line instead of a cost.

For a five-year extension costing ten dollars per unit at the factory, a retail uplift in the region of twenty-five dollars is a reasonable starting point: visible enough that a customer takes it, priced against the claim cost rather than against nothing. The brand sets the final number, because the brand carries the consumer relationship and the local consumer law behind it.

Two cautions on that. In the EU and the UK a commercial guarantee is in addition to statutory rights and cannot replace them, so the wording has to say so. And in some markets a guarantee that falls below the legal minimum is treated as an unfair contract term, which is worth checking before the SKU goes live.

Four documents, one term

Document	What it should state	What happens when it is vague
Catalogue or spec sheet	Two years, and that an extension exists	The buyer assumes the longest version they saw
Quotation	Base term, extension price, exclusions by reference	Price is negotiated, term is assumed
Proforma invoice	The option actually purchased	No contractual hook, so disputes become goodwill
User manual	The term and the exclusion list, in the market’s language	The end customer reads a different story from the buyer

What “covered” has to mean

A warranty without a stated scope is a promise to argue. Four things belong in the scope.

The defect class. Material and workmanship defects under normal use.

The exclusion list. Misuse, unauthorised repair, water ingress beyond the stated rating, use outside the rated supply, and force majeure. One line each, and each checkable from the returned unit.

Who pays freight. A warranty that covers the part but not the return freight is half a warranty, and it is the half buyers care about. State both directions.

What remedy applies. Repair, replace the unit, or replace the part. Different costs, different lead times, and a supplier who leaves it open will choose the cheapest.

Spare parts decide the years after the term

The lamp cartridge, the adapter, the cooling assembly and the housing set are what make a four-year-old unit repairable rather than scrap. Three questions before the first order: which parts can be supplied separately, for how long after the last production run, and can a whole-unit replacement be arranged for a unit that cannot be repaired in the field.

The middle question is the one nobody asks. A brand with ten thousand units in the field will need parts in year three for a model the factory stopped making.

The pattern that damages accounts

A quotation once stated a longer term than the reply that followed it, and the change was not flagged. The buyer had asked about the warranty explicitly and had the earlier answer on file. The correction never came, and the discrepancy sat in the thread until they raised it.

From the supplier’s side it looked like a term adjustment. From the buyer’s side it looked like a supplier whose numbers move, and every later correction in that thread was read through that lens.

The rule that came out of it, and the reason the term is now fixed at one number for the whole range: whenever a term changes after a quotation has gone out, the change gets a sentence of its own, in the same message, before anything else is discussed. It costs one line and protects everything else.

What we do, and what we do not

We state two years as the standard term on the quotation and again on the proforma invoice, quote the three-year and five-year extensions per unit, include the exclusion list and the freight responsibility, and list which parts can be supplied separately. We do not extend cover without pricing it, and we do not let a term change quietly between documents.

For the commercial side of the same conversation, what drives the quoted price explains why per-unit adders matter at volume, and the repair and refurbishment route covers what happens to units after the term ends. Our return policy states the consumer-facing position the warranty has to stay consistent with.