Quote:
Originally Posted by
ccfoodog 
As far as I know, you are going to basically pay MSRP for both the 530s and the 535s if you want the warranty. So you can either pay full price and get the warranty, or get them from an unauthorized source and take your chance.
I'm sure the 535s will show up at unauthorized dealers at a discounted price sooner or later.
-john
I've heard that any of the amazon sellers whose products are "fulfilled by amazon" will count for your warranty. I got mine from Z Electria fulfilled by amazon, and they honored the warranty.
I doubt they're actually 'unauthorized' anyway. I'm pretty sure Shure sells them to whoever will buy them. I though at first they call places that won't sell below the MAP, "authorized" to skirt price fixing laws, but since they don't have to do that anymore, I think its a scam so they don't have to honor warranty claims. They sell them at the same low wholesale price to everyone and get to advertise having a good warranty, but actually make it a $100+ option. Shure doesn't get any of that extra money, but it creates a price discrimination scheme where fewer people will pay full price for the warranty, and reduce the number of warranty claims Shure has to shell out for. I'd eat my hat (if I had one) if any significant number of 'phones sold from 'unauthorized' dealers were even actually grey market. Even if they were, Shure still owes you the warranty, since they got paid for them in the first place. If someone is selling some stolen ones then they might still even owe you the warranty depending on who they were stolen from. (Shure themselves of out of a retailer's warehouse.) I would say they'd owe you the warranty either way and that they should recover their losses from the thieves, not from the innocent customer, but there is a decent argument for the other side.
On a related note I believe the reason Shure decided to honor 'unauthorized' dealers which are "fulfilled by amazon" is because they were alienating too many people who followed the amazon link from Shure's authorized dealers page and bought it from another seller, since amazon usually automatically gives you the one with the lowest price. People don't know or care about such differences, and people will understandably get very angry when their warranty isn't honored as it should be. Since amazon isn't going to redesign their site to help some random company's price fixing policy, and they are such a big customer to Shure, they had to decide between dropping amazon an and 'authorized' dealer or honoring 'unauthorized' amazon sellers that are indistinguishable to the average consumer.
