european-union warranties netherlands
When buying a product directly from the manufacturer, which type of warranty applies: store warranty or manufacturer warranty?
<p>In a Dutch chatroom concerning computer hardware, we've had a bit of a discussion concerning warranty for an overheating GPU (AMD Radeon RX 6700XT Reference edition in case it's relevant) that was bought directly from the manufacturer's website by a third party and then sold to the current owner. The original buyer can easily be contacted to initiate an RMA request from their end if a fix can't be found, but a warranty claim would take weeks, so the current owner wants to first try to fix it by replacing a part that was known to cause such issues (the thermal pads), and only afterwards see about a potential RMA.</p>
<p>The discussion was partly about whether &quot;warranty void if sticker removed&quot; and other warranty limiting clauses apply in this case, because in the Netherlands, such clauses may only be invoked by the manufacturer, not the store. So the main question is: Does a manufacturer with their own online store count as a manufacturer or a store for the purposes of warranty?</p>

<p>If you buy from the manufacturer directly, or if you buy from a store run by the manufacturer, then the same company is simultaneously &quot;manufacturer&quot; and &quot;seller&quot;. You have all the rights that you usually would have against the manufacturer and the seller.</p>
<p>You have the right to ask either the manufacturer (under the manufacturer's warranty) or to ask the seller (under sellers warranty if there is one, or because of your statutory rights). Depending on the circumstances you might have more rights against one than against the other, and you would ask the one where you have more rights. Neither is allowed to fob you off to the other one. The fact that both are the same makes no difference.</p>
<p>So if you think you have rights against XYZ as the seller, but not against XYZ as the manufacturer, then you can demand your rights because they are the seller.</p>
