Buying Grohe fittings from other European countries

[The Medway Handyman]

I worked for Karcher for many years. The market in commercial pressure washers developed into a price war.

They had two grades of dealer - those who sold & serviced - and those who just sold (Karcher engineers providing the warranty).

The 'sell & service' dealers got a slightly better discount (around 5%) but of course had to provide warranty cover. The 'sell only' dealer could afford to work on a smaller margin.

This lead to a huge amount of arguments. Customer buying from a 'sell only' dealer would take the machine back to a 'sell & service' dealer (assuming that like Ford, any dealer would cover warranty). The 'sell & service' dealer would tell the customer to take it back to where he bought it (not always politely).

When some of the bigger 'sell & service' started to bring in grey imports Karcher finally realised what a mess things were in - but completely ignored it. All they cared about was the margin when the machine left the factory, not what happened afterwards.

[Andy Hall]

I just looked at the warranty and service booklet for a Kaercher product. They have an EU-wide warranty but say that it operates under German law. They advise contacting the supplier of the product.....

[Andy Hall]

This was the kind of "grey import" that I meant. Technically it isn't because the UK dealer will have sourced the products presumably from Germany somehow and that from an EU perspective would mean goods moving in free circulation from one member state to another.

The problem is that more than likely Kaercher will not have an arrangement in place for the UK subsidiary to be credited for shipments made in this way - indeed it would be very difficult to track anyway if the UK dealer buys from a German one for example.

What you describe is a classic channel conflict situation which happens in probably every industry.

The Single Market is certainly a curate's egg. There are good aspects to it. Unfortunately it doesn't take good account of different costs of sale and overheads in different countries and tracking product movement, which is what is really necessary, becomes a real problem for relatively low priced items.

I just looked at one of their warranty booklets. The wording is not at all clear in terms of what is provided and how. Therefore it does appear that consumer remedies remain the better choice.