According to an online store, these are the products that break most often

Which devices are the most common warranty cases? (Source: Nikolai Chernichenko via Unsplash)

Quiz question: What do you never want to have to worry about when buying a product, but when the time comes, are you glad it exists?

Answer: The manufacturer’s guarantee.

Within the warranty period, which can vary in length depending on the brand and product, manufacturers voluntarily undertake a specific procedure if the purchased device breaks down.

This can mean, for example, a repair or a direct equivalent exchange of the old product. However, the guarantee itself should not be confused with the guarantee that is prescribed by law and is usually 24 months.

But which products are most often affected by such warranty cases? The answer to this is indicated by the online shop Galaxus, which publishes monthly statistics on the warranty case rates.

The shop promises a decision-making aid as to whether customers maybe buy a less defect-prone device from the competition want.

Guarantee cases at Galaxus: Household appliances come off worst

The statistics evaluated as of June 2023 explain that a total of 0.4 percent of the products purchased from Galaxus became a warranty case in the past 24 months.

Unsurprisingly, the lion’s share is in the four most popular product groups:

• Household appliances (0.83 percent)
• IT (0,7 Prozent)
• Consumer electronics (0.69 percent)
• Mobile devices (0.67 percent)

As Galaxus explains, these are groups naturally more susceptible to defects than, for example, cooking pots or tennis rackets. The purchase price also plays a role here, because the motivation to assert a guarantee case is significantly greater with more expensive products.

Within the individual product groups, on the other hand, a rather unexpected group took the unwanted top spot: According to Galaxus, 5.6 percent of the e-scooters and hoverboards bought in the online shop break down within the warranty period.

If you break down the product group into its individual parts, the e-scooters perform even worse: According to Galaxus, 7.2 percent of the scooters purchased are covered by a guarantee due to a defect through no fault of their own.

According to Galaxus, broken parts and ball bearing and tire damage are the most frequently complained about. The purchase price is irrelevant here; expensive e-scooters are just as prone to errors as cheap models.

The flop 3 is completed by baby monitors (2.89 percent) and headphones (2.19 percent).

If, like us, you expected printers and large household appliances such as washing machines or dryers to be at the top, you have to look a little further down the list: At 1.27 and 1.08 percent, respectively, the warranty case rate reads relatively well.

For which products and brands did you have a guarantee? Were there cases where the processing was quick or did you have to wait forever for a replacement? Which manufacturers do you consider particularly (un)reliable? Let us know in the comments!