Wheelchair Diffusion Blog

If you are into mobility the red Ferrari is probably the car most likely to get you salivating. Disability be damned on this one. Almost every person with a disability that I know would pop a piston trying to get behind the wheel of this red beauty. As for the powered wheelchair, well, it’s a nice kind of generic cruiser that very few people are getting in line to hop into. Regardless of differences in cost and raw sex appeal, the two mobility devices have something in common. Sooner or later, they will both need repairs. If you are lucky, the required repairs will be under warranty.

If it’s your car that is on the hook, repairs may be annoying but no big deal. You go to any dealership, sit in a nice waiting room complete with AC and coffee, and smile knowing that this one is on Ferrari, Ford, Honda, or whomever your payment book indicates. If it is not under warranty, then just follow all of the above but do not smile. Smiling under these circumstances will result in a juiced up repair bill.

Contrary to popular belief, the auto sales industry and the wheelchair sales industry are not the same. Car dealers are franchised. By their franchise agreement, they must supply certain services on their chosen make of vehicles regardless of where the vehicle was purchased. Buy your Ferrari in Peoria and break down in Poughkeepsie 7 hours later (counting bathroom and gas stops) and your warranty is good to go in Poughkeepsie. Have that happen in your brand new wheelchair and you will wish you never heard of Poughkeepsie.

Contrary to car dealers, wheelchair dealers or suppliers are not franchised. They can offer one brand today and another one next week. A wheelchair dealer can switch product lines almost as fast as the Ferrari can get up to 60 mph. To really put a damper on that trip to Poughkeepsie, the distributor who sold the wheelchair is the one that does the warranty work. The dealer that made the sale is expected to eat the labor cost of warranty work while the manufacturer supplies the needed parts.

This presents a number of problems for a wheelchair user who is experiencing problems that are under warranty.

• You can only get the wheelchair fixed in one place. Going someplace else does not work since that dealer made no money on the sale of the wheelchair and will not want to absorb the labor costs.
• You’re a done deal if your dealer goes out of business. No other dealer will touch your warranty work since they made no profit on the sale of the wheelchair.
• Numerous repairs under warranty may exhaust much of the profit the dealer made on the sale and will result in some seriously sluggish service.
• There is no incentive for the dealer to facilitate the repair in a timely manner.
• Shortcuts and quick fixes abound further complicating the user’s situation.
• Often times a wheelchair user will pay for repairs that are covered by the warranty just to keep rolling.
• Wheelchair users who experience poor or slow repair services often wind up “housebound” for lack of a usable mobility device.

Further complicating this situation is the inability of dealers to inventory the diverse spectrum of rather expensive parts. The industry also has a much less refined parts distribution system than is found in the auto industry. Remember, while wheelchair sales in the USA is a large industry it does not compare to the auto industry in size, volume, and dollars turned.

What to do? There is not much to say on that issue. Perhaps the manufacturers need to develop a fail-safe or rescue provision in their warranties. Perhaps wheelchairs should be considered more a vehicle and less an appliance. At present, a powerchair warranty reads like something that was contained in the box that your television or coffee maker came in. It is nothing like the one you get with a car. Possibly, there should be legislation that protects caught up consumers. Alternatively, just maybe, everyone should ride around in a red Ferrari. Me first!