I will first go over the standard time frames for gun safes warranties.
I will then explain the warranties and some of the fine print, and then how you should look for what works best for your situation.
One Year
The usual or “standard” one year warranty for a gun or security safe covers very limited concerns. In most cases the one year warranties on the market are given by the lower priced gun safes or the higher end gun lockers and gun cabinets.
There are very few things that can go wrong with a gun safe or any type of safe for that matter. Your new safes locking mechanism can stop working all together or the locking bolts can seize up or just break. The typical one year warranty will either replace the failed component or pay all of or some percentage of a locksmith to come repair. This is good enough if you bought a safe and saved a fortune on it.
Most of the one year warranties have a clause that states it is non transferable. I would of course suggest that you ask about the warranties on the safe you are looking at, before you buy.
Five Years
As the price of a safe increases, you will see the length of the warranty increase also. The safes with a 1–5 year warranty are showing you the faith the company has in the product they are making or selling.
Do be careful with this though. Some of these longer safe warranties have a great deal of “fine print” in them to ensure that the company selling you this bill of goods will never have to pay out on it.
These types of warranties usually cover the same items as the one year but they will tell you that there is a “no questions asked policy”. GunSafeSpot.com did the research and found that some of these longer warranties are willing to tell you that they will not fix a problem that you are having with the safe because it is not covered in the fine print on the warranty contract.
We had one case where the company told us because we were not a home owner that the warranty was void.. They did not care about our problems since they had already received $5000 from us just three months before.
On this subject I tell people to really read the warranty before, during, and after the purchase of the safe.
Warranty Fine Print
Just what I was talking about earlier, the “fine print”. Here at GunSafeSpot.com we have an employee that used to work for one of the biggest insurance underwriters in the nation and the world. They have employees that are paid very well to simply take the risk information they come up with and create fine print in the warranties or contracts that will protect them from paying out to customers that file claims.
Sorry ladies and gentlemen, that is correct, the insurance and warranty companies have a vested financial interest in making sure that the conditions and clauses in the contracts are so that they do not lose a bunch of money on claims.
In most of the warranties we looked at and read, even the best lifetime no questions asked warranty, there was incredible fine print.
In most cases the fine print stated things like that you had to be a homeowner and have homeowners insurance. If there is a fire then the person has to have a police report, fire report, a letter from the home owners insurance stating they denied the claim and for what reason, and proof of purchase original receipt.
Now this is fine except the fact of the company can then deny the claim based on the reasons the home owners insurance denies the claim and the fine print goes on to state that this is only good if the warranty paperwork is filed with the company within 30 days of the original purchase.
So what if your renting a house?
What if you forgot to file your original warranty paperwork?
So we do suggest you ask to see the warranty paperwork they offer and read it carefully. If it is the incredible warranty they are using to sell a high priced safe, but there are a mountain of fine print clauses, then the warranty and higher price add no value.
Be careful of the “full replacement of contents and of safe claims.
Replacement of Safe or Destroyed Property
I really wish I had not learned the ugly truth on this one. I had bought a gun safe and stored some electronics in it.
I had made my purchase because they advertised heavily that if the safe were too be in a fire, they would replace any damaged items and the safe for the life of my ownership.
Wow, what a great deal.
The safe price was rather high, but I would only need one for the rest of my life.
Well unfortunately I had a fire at my home the house burned to the ground. Everyone in my family were safe and not home at the time. But when I made my claim to the company they denied me because they said I did not have the safe originally installed by a approved company on their list.
Are you kidding me?!
I looked over my warranty fine print and it did not mention there was a list that they had I had to choose from. I ended up having to go to my attorney. My attorney found that if they state it has to be installed professionally that they do not have to tell you that there is a list you must pick from, it is implied.
Needless to say I was burned both literally and figuratively by the fine print of this un-named safe manufacturer. There is no such thing as a free ride and I learned that it applies in the safe warranty world as well.
I tell this story not to be bitter, but to simply warn other to please read the fine print before you sign.