Fujitsu wants to be Apple 2.0, offering lifetime customers (free-esque) upgrades.
Apparently in a bid to secure long-term customers – or perhaps just squeeze them dry for all their worth in the short term – Fujitsu Siemens Computers is making available, at least on the surface, a rather novel offering with its notebook range. Calling it ‘LIFEBOOK4Life’, the company promises a free replacement notebook after three years of the original purchase of a select ‘LIFEBOOK’ lappy and subsequently every three years after that for the rest of the owner’s life.
Subject to numerous terms and conditions, it’s quick to add. Among the requirements to ensure you get your ‘free’ replacement are that you purchase the usually excruciatingly pricey extended warranty and don’t lose the receipt. Owners must also not fail to accept any offered upgrades and must remember to register the notebook within 21 days of purchase or they’re immediately hosed out of the deal.
Intriguingly, the system offered will only be a “system of comparable specification and value.” This kinda sucks the wind right out of it if that means precisely what it says. To vaguely soften the blow, this value is increased by 10% (every three years) to account for inflation.
But it keeps getting better. Owners can’t purchase, say, generic system memory to shove in, as the gear must all be entirely official. This is curious behaviour coming from a company that proudly claims in its press releases that its “customers have the freedom to choose whatever IT infrastructure fits best to their specific needs.” How droll.
“We want everyone who becomes a LIFEBOOK user to remain a LIFEBOOK user – not only for the useful working life of their mobile PC, but for their own working career – and maybe beyond,” says the company’s marketing head Paul Hoey.
As an aside, this 50/50 joint venture between Fujitsu and Siemens AG since 1999 is set to come to a close early next year, with Fujitsu aiming to secure Siemens AG’s entire fifty percent share. According to Fujitsu, earlier in the month, this acquisition is the “next step in becoming a truly global company”. Presumably, enticing customers into lopsided deals follows this mega-corporation goal.
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