Warranty Terms the Customer Must See Before Buying

Why this matters

The warranty dispute that costs a shop the most is rarely about what the warranty says. It is about when the customer first saw it. A compressor fails in month seven, the manufacturer denies the claim because the unit was never registered, and the customer says, truthfully, that nobody showed her the terms before she signed. Federal law has had something to say about that moment since 1975, and it applies to the kitchen-table sale most residential shops make every day. This card is about the timing duty and the habit that satisfies it, not about how to design your warranty.

The rule: text available before the sale

The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act gave the FTC authority to require that warranty terms be available to a buyer before purchase, and the FTC did it in the Pre-Sale Availability Rule, 16 CFR Part 702. Its shape:

• It applies to a consumer product that carries a written warranty and costs more than the small dollar threshold the rule sets. That threshold is low enough that essentially every piece of equipment a residential shop installs clears it.
• It puts duties on the warrantor (usually the manufacturer), which must supply warranty materials sellers can use, and on the seller, which must make the full text available for the buyer's review before the sale is made.
• The rule lists the ways a seller can do that, and they differ by sales channel: display or binders in a store, information in a catalog, posting for internet sales, and a specific paragraph for what the rule calls door-to-door sales.

That last channel is the one that matters here. The rule defines a door-to-door sale as one where the seller personally solicits it and the buyer agrees to buy somewhere other than the seller's place of business, and the definition expressly includes a sale made after the buyer invited the seller in. A comfort advisor at the kitchen table, a plumber quoting a water heater in the basement, a garage door tech selling an opener in the driveway: all of these fit. In that channel the seller must, before the sale is consummated, offer to show the buyer the text of each written warranty on the product.

Note what "offer" means in practice: the customer can decline to read it. The duty is to put it in front of them, not to make them read it. A rule that is satisfied by an offer is satisfied only if the offer can be proved later, which is the subject of the rest of this card.

This is a federal rule, and it sits under state law, not in place of it. Several states' home improvement contractor statutes require warranty terms to appear in the written contract itself, and a state unfair and deceptive practices act can reach a warranty that was misdescribed in the sales conversation even when the text was technically offered. See related: Home Improvement Contractor Laws and What They Usually Require. This is not legal advice.

Which products, and which promises

Consumer product in Magnuson-Moss means tangible personal property normally used for personal, family or household purposes, and the statute says it includes property intended to be attached to or installed in real property. So a furnace, a heat pump, a water heater, a softener, a garage door opener or a pool pump sold to a homeowner is a consumer product even though it ends up bolted to the house. The FTC's interpretations at 16 CFR 700.1 draw a line between separate equipment, which is covered, and building materials that become part of the structure, which generally are not when sold as part of the building. The line is fact-specific; a roofing system or a run of copper pipe is a harder case than a condenser.

Written warranty means a written promise about the product's materials or workmanship, or a promise to repair, replace or refund if it fails. Sort the promises a typical install carries:

The practical point of the table: the federal rule reaches the first two, the customer experiences all four as "the warranty", and the dispute will be about whichever one failed. Treat all four the same at the table.

What the customer has to see, not just receive

Handing over a folder at the end does not do the job, because the sale is already consummated by then. The useful habit is a single page or screen, shown before signature, that lists each warranty attached to the job and its conditions in plain words, with the full text available behind it. The conditions are where warranty claims die, so they are what the page exists to surface:

• Registration. Many manufacturers extend their base warranty only if the product is registered within a stated window after install. Say who registers it, you or the customer, and by when.
• Maintenance. Many warranties require periodic maintenance and records of it. Say what, and how often the manufacturer's text says.
• Labor. A manufacturer parts warranty frequently covers the part and not the labor to install it. Say what your labor warranty covers and for how long, so the customer knows which bill they could still get.
• Transfer and exclusions. Whether it follows the house, and the exclusions the customer is most likely to trigger (improper fuel, unfiltered water, installation by others).

For program design, meaning what your own warranty should promise and how to word it, see related: The Warranty Language You Put in Writing and What It Commits You To; Written Warranty Language Design. This card is about the moment of showing it.

Worked example: the unregistered heat pump

A four-tech HVAC shop sells a heat pump system at a homeowner's kitchen table. The job carries three promises: the manufacturer's limited parts warranty, which runs for a long term only if the equipment is registered within a short window after install and otherwise reverts to a much shorter base term; the shop's own two-year written labor warranty; and an optional maintenance plan the customer buys, which includes two visits a year.

What happened. The comfort advisor's tablet has a single "sign here" screen with the price and a line reading "warranties included". The manufacturer's text lives in the box the installers open on install day, and the install tech leaves it on the water heater. Nobody registers the equipment. Seven months later the compressor fails, which is inside the shop's two-year labor warranty and past the window. The manufacturer applies the base term, which has not run out, so the compressor is still covered, but the registration-dependent coverage on other components is gone and the customer has read online that she "lost the 10-year warranty". She calls angry and files a complaint with the attorney general.

Where the shop stands. Under the rule, the question is whether the seller offered to show the warranty text before the sale. The shop's own record says "warranties included" and nothing about an offer. The advisor remembers "going over" it; the customer says no. A record that cannot answer the question is, for this purpose, the same as a record that answers it badly. See related: The Attorney General Complaint: What Happens Next.

What the job should have looked like. Before the signature screen, a warranty screen listing three items:

1. Manufacturer parts warranty: long term if registered within the window, base term if not. The shop registers it within one week of install and emails the customer the confirmation.
2. Shop labor warranty: two years from install, covers labor on any failure of equipment the shop installed.
3. Maintenance plan: a service plan, not a warranty; two visits a year; records kept in the customer file, which also satisfies the manufacturer's maintenance condition.

Then a checkbox, ticked by the customer: "I was offered the full text of each warranty before signing." The full manufacturer text is one tap away on the same screen. Total added time at the table: about four minutes.

The outcome under that version. Registration happens because it is the shop's written job, so the failure in month seven is a covered parts claim plus a labor warranty visit, and the complaint never gets written. If the shop had missed registration anyway, the customer would have been told it was the shop's job, which makes the miss the shop's to absorb rather than a dispute about who said what.

What changes the answer. If the customer registers the equipment herself under the screen's terms and does not, the record shows she was told the condition and who owned it. That puts the shop in a much better position, and it is still not a guarantee: a state deceptive-practices claim looks at the overall impression the sale left, and an attorney general may give little weight to a checkbox if the advisor's spoken pitch said "lifetime coverage, nothing to do". In states whose home improvement statute requires warranty terms in the contract itself, a separate screen that never became part of the signed document may not satisfy that state rule even if it satisfies the federal one. Put the warranty summary inside the signed contract, not beside it.

The failure modes that are specific to this rule

• The text arrives with the equipment. It was shown, but after the sale. That is the most common way a shop that "always gives them the warranty" still misses the rule.
• The advisor summarizes from memory. Summaries drift toward the longest term and drop the conditions. The screen exists so nobody summarizes.
• The manufacturer changes the terms. Warranty terms change between model years. Pull the current text from the manufacturer's dealer materials when a new model is quoted, not from last year's binder.
• Phone and email quotes. A sale closed by phone or by an emailed proposal is not a door-to-door sale under the rule's definition, but it is still a sale, and the rule has paragraphs for remote channels. The simplest habit is the same for every channel: the warranty summary and a link to the full text go into the proposal itself.

How to verify you got this right

• Pick five recent equipment sales and look for a dated record, created before the signature, showing the warranty text was offered. Five out of five is the target.
• For each, confirm the registration condition, if any, has a named owner and a completed date in the job record.
• Read your current proposal template for every warranty-related word. Any phrase like "full coverage" or "lifetime" that the manufacturer's text does not support comes out.
• Ask one advisor to explain the warranty to you as they would at the table and compare it to the text.

References

• Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, 15 U.S.C. 2301 and following (definition of consumer product at 2301(1))
• FTC, Pre-Sale Availability of Written Warranty Terms, 16 CFR Part 702
• FTC, Interpretations of Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, 16 CFR Part 700 (consumer products at 700.1; service contracts at 700.11)
• See related: The Warranty Language You Put in Writing and What It Commits You To; Written Warranty Language Design
• See related: Home Improvement Contractor Laws and What They Usually Require