The issue here is twofold. Firstly, as pointed out by another poster, if you have ONE good warranty experience, it makes you loyal to a brand for many years thereafter. It is thus in the interest of the manuf, distributor, LBS etc to honour as many warranty claims as they reasonably can. However, the problem lies is in the massive amounts of fraudulent claims and abuse of claims - the short-term insurance industry reports fraud or attempted fraud running into many billions each year. When you are dealing with extremely high value items that can be/are abused, there's a fine line to be walked by the LBS.
