posted 01-10-2014 11:38 AM ET (US)
There is no telling what a dealer will charge for his services or for the outboard engines and accessories he sells. Under the promotion, you get some items at no charge as part of the free rigging offer. You can either take the items that come with the free rigging offer, or you can take the value of those items at their manufacturer suggested retail price and use it as a credit against the purchase of the E-TEC engine.Maybe I need to repeat the offer as it has some variations:
If you are buying a new boat and the boat comes with an E-TEC, the warranty on the E-TEC will be extended to six-years from three-years. And any accessories Evinrude items like rigging that are on the boat also get the extended warranty. That is the promotion. There are no options for this situation. It is nice warranty because now your gauges, your controls, your rigging, and so on, the Evinrude items, have a six year warranty, too.
If you are buying a loose Evinrude outboard engine, you will have to choose between two options:
--you can have financing at a certain APR for a certain number of years if you qualify for the terms of the credit; or,
--you can have the six-year warranty extension.
With either of those choices as a buyer of a loose engine you also get a choice of two more options:
--you can get a System Check rigging package (which will include remote controls, remote oil tank, if needed, wiring harness, and a System Check tachometer gauge); or,
--you can receive a credit for an amount equal to the MSRP of the System Check rigging package, and the credit can be used to reduce the cost of the engine purchase.
If you follow the decision tree of these options you see there are four possible outcomes. This makes the promotion offer have a total of five possible variations:
--got new boat, got six-year warranty on engine and accessories
--got only new motor, took financing offer, took rigging offer
--got only new motor, took financing offer, took credit instead of rigging
--got only new motor, took warranty offer, took rigging offer
--got only new motor, took warranty offer, took credit instead of rigging
If you buy the Evinrude in Florida, apparently there is a state law there that affects how the six-year warranty is written or applied. This is not something specific to Evinrude. The change in warranty offer is specific to Florida. I imagine it affects all warranty offers in Florida. It might be a good topic for discussion in another thread.
Note that if you buy a new engine already on a new boat you do not get an incentive for free rigging. I assume that is because Evinrude already gave that free rigging incentive to the boat builder. But you do get the extended warranty on all the components of the rigging that Evinrude provided.
The above is my interpretation. See a dealer for details. If you find that there is something wrong with my interpretation, please let me know. I discussed this with a dealer, so there is at least one dealer out there who thinks this is how the promotion is going to work.
There is nothing in the relationship between engine manufacturers and their authorized dealers that sets the cost of the labor charged to the customer for work the dealer does, except the provision of the warranty to pay for the labor charge if the labor is to repair a defect in the original manufacture of the product that is covered by the warranty. The term "free rigging" is explained in the context of this promotion to mean certain items provided at no cost, but not the labor needed to install them. This is not really an unusual concept, as the price of an outboard is generally considered to not include the cost of labor for a dealer to install the outboard. The cost of the labor charge by the dealer is up to the dealer. It is not covered in the promotion. You can decide how much labor from the dealer you want to purchase. There is a mandatory requirement for some dealer involvement in the installation of a new E-TEC in order to activate the warranty. This is completely reasonable because there must be some assessment that the product has been installed properly. If Evinrude is going to offer a warranty that their engine will be covered for six years, it is reasonable to expect that they will first need to be satisfied that it was properly installed. I think language of that sort is in all outboard engine warranty statements.