"Tie-In Sales" Provisions Generally, tie-in sales provisions are not allowed. Such a provision would require a purchaser of the warranted product to buy an item or service from a particular company to use with the warranted product in order to be eligible to receive a remedy under the warranty. The following are examples of prohibited tie-in sales provisions.
In order to keep your new Plenum Brand Vacuum Cleaner warranty in effect, you must use genuine Plenum Brand Filter Bags. Failure to have scheduled maintenance performed, at your expense, by the Great American Maintenance Company, Inc., voids this warranty.
While you cannot use a tie-in sales provision, your warranty need not cover use of replacement parts, repairs, or maintenance that is inappropriate for your product. The following is an example of a permissible provision that excludes coverage of such things.
While necessary maintenance or repairs on your AudioMundo Stereo System can be performed by any company, we recommend that you use only authorized AudioMundo dealers. Improper or incorrectly performed maintenance or repair voids this warranty.
Although tie-in sales provisions generally are not allowed, you can include such a provision in your warranty if you can demonstrate to the satisfaction of the FTC that your product will not work properly without a specified item or service. If you believe that this is the case, you should contact the warranty staff of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection for information on how to apply for a waiver of the tie-in sales prohibition.
I remember the first time I had to fire someone. It was at a startup, and everyone who worked for us at that point was a friend of either mine or my co-founder. In some ways that made it easier -- money spent on someone who wasn't pulling their weight meant that the chances were palpably greater that we'd all be out of a job, which would clearly be worse.
This guy, "Hacker X," signed on to do a bunch of stuff, and just flat-out didn't do it. He was working from a remote location much of the time, which made it harder to realize what was going on, but once we caught on, and he didn't improve after remonstrating with him, we knew he had to go.
The catch was, how do we fire him? By email? By phone? This seemed a little cold since, well, he was a friend. Heck, it would be cold even if he wasn't a friend.
It just so happened that I was going to a conference I knew he'd also attend, and the plan was to fire him there. Once there, however, I was torn -- fire him at the start, and have him upset through the conference, or wait until the end (but personally be sweating it out through the whole conference). My gf at the time was there, and I talked it through with her a couple of times and decided to wait to the end.
So, just before lunch on the final day I pull "Hacker X" aside and tell him he's fired. If anything, he's relieved -- he'd known he'd been a useless drag, and felt terrible about it. I get him to sign some paperwork, and he tries to refuse his severance. I get him to take it anyhow.
I get back to the cluster of people waiting for lunch, and my gf is there, and asks me how it went. "Better than expected." Other folks ask what's going on, and I explain -- "I just had to fire a friend, Hacker X. Never had to fire anyone, much less a friend. I was pretty freaked out, but he took it well." Another guy in the group who'd made the transition from techie to manager a couple years before me says "yeah, been there before, done that." "What, you had to fire a friend?" "No, I had to fire Hacker X..."
A breach of contract is not a crime. In fact, a basic tenet of modern contract law is that there is such a thing as an "efficient breach" -- that is, there are situations when it is economically efficient to not perform on a contract.
There is a *huge* difference between the ability of your "communication service provider" to sue you in civil court, and the ability of said provider to sic the prosecutor on you.
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Uh, folks, RTFM:
"Tie-In Sales" Provisions
Generally, tie-in sales provisions are not allowed. Such a provision would require a purchaser of the warranted product to buy an item or service from a particular company to use with the warranted product in order to be eligible to receive a remedy under the warranty. The following are examples of prohibited tie-in sales provisions.
In order to keep your new Plenum Brand Vacuum Cleaner warranty in effect, you must use genuine Plenum Brand Filter Bags. Failure to have scheduled maintenance performed, at your expense, by the Great American Maintenance Company, Inc., voids this warranty.
While you cannot use a tie-in sales provision, your warranty need not cover use of replacement parts, repairs, or maintenance that is inappropriate for your product. The following is an example of a permissible provision that excludes coverage of such things.
While necessary maintenance or repairs on your AudioMundo Stereo System can be performed by any company, we recommend that you use only authorized AudioMundo dealers. Improper or incorrectly performed maintenance or repair voids this warranty.
Although tie-in sales provisions generally are not allowed, you can include such a provision in your warranty if you can demonstrate to the satisfaction of the FTC that your product will not work properly without a specified item or service. If you believe that this is the case, you should contact the warranty staff of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection for information on how to apply for a waiver of the tie-in sales prohibition.
This guy, "Hacker X," signed on to do a bunch of stuff, and just flat-out didn't do it. He was working from a remote location much of the time, which made it harder to realize what was going on, but once we caught on, and he didn't improve after remonstrating with him, we knew he had to go.
The catch was, how do we fire him? By email? By phone? This seemed a little cold since, well, he was a friend. Heck, it would be cold even if he wasn't a friend.
It just so happened that I was going to a conference I knew he'd also attend, and the plan was to fire him there. Once there, however, I was torn -- fire him at the start, and have him upset through the conference, or wait until the end (but personally be sweating it out through the whole conference). My gf at the time was there, and I talked it through with her a couple of times and decided to wait to the end.
So, just before lunch on the final day I pull "Hacker X" aside and tell him he's fired. If anything, he's relieved -- he'd known he'd been a useless drag, and felt terrible about it. I get him to sign some paperwork, and he tries to refuse his severance. I get him to take it anyhow.
I get back to the cluster of people waiting for lunch, and my gf is there, and asks me how it went. "Better than expected." Other folks ask what's going on, and I explain -- "I just had to fire a friend, Hacker X. Never had to fire anyone, much less a friend. I was pretty freaked out, but he took it well." Another guy in the group who'd made the transition from techie to manager a couple years before me says "yeah, been there before, done that." "What, you had to fire a friend?" "No, I had to fire Hacker X..."
A breach of contract is not a crime. In fact, a basic tenet of modern contract law is that there is such a thing as an "efficient breach" -- that is, there are situations when it is economically efficient to not perform on a contract.
There is a *huge* difference between the ability of your "communication service provider" to sue you in civil court, and the ability of said provider to sic the prosecutor on you.