Warranty Recovery

Should warranty be outsourced?

As an option to managing their own warranty recovery programs, fleets may outsource this operation.

“The cost of finding, hiring and retaining in-house warranty administrators who have expertise with multiple OEM warranty policies and procedures can be prohibitive,” says Richard L. Matosky, president, CASCOR, Inc., a company specializing in fleet warranty administration.

“To determine if the cost makes sense, a fleet should have a benchmark figure as to the potential warranty reimbursement the fleet should be recovering on a yearly basis. This would allow the fleet to do a cost/benefit analysis between outsourcing and doing it themselves with their own people.”

In today’s business environment, personnel resources are one of the first places fleets look to in order to help control costs, he says. Unfortunately, that means less people doing more work. Something has to suffer as re-prioritization needs to take place in order for the fleet to remain in safe operation.

“Repairs, PMs and other scheduled and unscheduled maintenance are ongoing – that’s the nature of running a fleet,” explains Matosky. “So, ‘behind-the-scenes’ administrative work either gets pushed off to the side or is re-distributed to already over-burdened fleet management staff. In that environment, the quality of the work has to suffer, so outsourcing becomes attractive, offering minimal overhead with maximum return.