Your Lifetime Warranty: The Fine Print

HELP! I CAN’T REMEMBER MY PASSWORDS

By Neil Offen
Columnist

This limited lifetime warranty on your lifetime is not limited to all the parts you don’t use very often, like that third toe from the right (which is so inconsequential it does not even have a name), the ear lobes (generally useless if you’re not going with diamond studs) and the appendix, which more accurately is considered to be the last few pages right before the index. 

It applies to the entire rest of your body, which is under warranty to be free from defects in materials and workmanship, but only while under normal use, which doesn’t include regularly eating too many French fries, chewing on throat lozenges rather than sucking them or not doing a single ab crunch since the second week of March 2008.

According to federal regulations, fallen arches, receding hairlines and increasingly stiff lower backs are not considered to be defects in materials or workmanship, but, rather, really bad luck in the genetic lottery. Really bad luck is not covered by the warranty.

This warranty also does not cover any damage to the product caused by smoking while you were in college because you thought it looked cool, walking outside to the mailbox without shoes on or other intentional misuse, such as Twinkies. Additionally, it does not cover accidental mishandling from going too many nights without sufficient sleep because you wanted to watch just one more episode of “Slow Horses” or closing the trunk of the car on your forehead that time because you weren’t paying attention.

The warranty does cover any repairs needed to correct defects in material or workmanship, such as being left-handed, as long as they were reported during the applicable warranty period (Feb.11 – Feb. 13, noon to 5) and which occurred through normal use, as long as the purchaser maintains regular maintenance and doesn’t fall off the treadmill.

To receive full coverage during the warranty period, the customer must agree to receive an endless stream of “valuable communications” from companies whose products may once have been googled during a weak moment.

Repair services are covered one time only during the first 1,236,000 miles of operation (equivalent to 8,761 work-team mission-building planning meetings) or by the time you finally finish reading “Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace, whichever comes first.

Repairs to correct defects in material or workmanship will be made at the discretion of an authorized practitioner who may suggest either a heating pad or an ice pack or may acknowledge that no one really knows which one’s better. Repairs may not be available on weekends or late at night or during holiday periods or at any other time when they are really needed.

To obtain covered repair service, you must first register the claim by creating an account and creating a password for the account that will soon be forgotten. Remember to include the model number (found under the tongue), vaccination record, dental chart and a complete list of all the promises you have made about running that marathon or doing pushups again. 

Repairs are not guaranteed and may have to be repeated several times as product gets older and crankier.

Carrboro resident Neil Offen has been a humor columnist for more than four decades and on two continents. He is the author of “Building a Better Boomer,” available wherever books are sold.