I would think that the HCP who sold the pair of HAs to a patient would and should keep a database of which serial # aids they sold themselves and they would report that information back to Oticon somehow. They’d need such a database of their own to process warranty claims if necessary anyway.
So the HCP should have their own database of which exact HAs they sold to whom on what date with a warranty term for how long.
I’m sure Oticon receives and keeps warranty information on all aids sold by the authorized HCP. But I can understand why they won’t make their own master database of ALL registered HAs available to ANY HCPs or ANY owners who want to look it up. That’s Oticon’s own proprietary information and there’s really no benefit for Oticon to make such master database available to ALL of their participating HCPs or owners.
Why would Oticon want keep this information private? I’m sure there are many good reasons, one being that they don’t want to encourage private party resale of their HAs. They can’t stop people from doing it, but they wouldn’t have any good reason to encourage private party selling either. Unless Oticon specifically allows their HAs’ warranty to be transferrable to second owners (I’m not 100% sure but I think it’s highly unlikely), why would they want to give out warranty information on any of their HAs so that the second owners can demand warranty service from them.
Even if the first owner shows the second owner the receipt of purchase as proof that the 3 year warranty is still in effect, if the second owner runs into problems with the HAs and they call into Oticon support, I think it’s highly likely that Oticon support would tell the second owner to go back to the HCP to process the warranty claim anyway. There’s no reason why Oticon would want to process warranty claims directly.
And even if the second owner can get in touch with the HCP of the first owner and see them in person, there’s no guarantee that the HCP would be willing to process the claim either, especially if there’s nothing in writing in the purchase agreement to say that the warranty is transferrable to the second owner. But it’s possible, I guess, if somehow the second owner can convince the HCP that they’ll do business with this HCP in the future, then MAYBE the HCP would be willing to process the warranty for the second owner because Oticon wouldn’t know that the HAs’s ownership have changed hands.
I think with many commodity-type consumer products, the working model is that the manufacturer would honor and process the warranty for the consumers directly, not the sellers. But the HA industry is is not a commodity market, so it’s probably set up in such a way that the HCP is the MAIN interface with the customers for everything, and the manufacturer only stands behind the HCP to provide support through the HCP as necessary.
