Magento

Hello,

I am trying to figure out the best way to setup product warranty options in the catalog.  The idea is to offer an optional warranty extension for each product in the system. The warranty extension choice being none, 2 or 5 years. The last two choices adding some extra cost (depending on the product) to the item.

In Magento philosophy, should this be implemented as Configurable products ? In that case, it requires to create a mother Configurable Product, and an additional (simple) product for each choice in the options ? Is there a way to avoid duplicating the mother product or is it the only way to work ?

If I recall right, there was something about warranties in the roadmap, but can’t findit anymore in current roadmap for Q1-2008. Has it been (re)moved ?

Right now the best way to setup warranties is as related items. The way I think of it, working with any configurable setup is not the right way to work with warranties since the combination of a product and a warranty does not map to a single SKU (I might be wrong in some industries). The warranty module we had up initially on our road-map referred to a much more extensive module that would require a customer to actively decline adding a warranty at the time of purchase, and attaching a warranty item to a single instance of a product in an order (think of a case that 2 of the same products were added to the cart but with one warranty. The customer will choose to apply the warranty to the first item that breaks). Unfurtunatly, this module will not be part of the first stable release of Magento and might be developed in the future. Another future module that might serve this purpose is the configurable Bundle module. Using the bundle module you can bundle a product with a warranty and allow the customer to select to add or not to add a warranty item while adding the product. This feature should be added to Magento early next year.

Thanks

yoav