Gewährleistung. German law gives a buyer a statutory two-year warranty against defects present at delivery, independent of any manufacturer guarantee, and for the first twelve months the defect is presumed to have existed at handover. The seller must prove otherwise.
retail
The extended warranty
A substantial American retail business is built on selling additional coverage at the point of sale, on everything from appliances to phones. The industry exists because buyers price the risk of failure into the purchase.
The warranty
American products compete on warranty terms — length, coverage, whether it transfers with the vehicle, whether there is a deductible. The promise is not that the product will not fail. It is about what happens when it does.
One-click
Amazon patented single-click ordering in 1999 and defended the patent for two decades. Removing one step from a purchase was considered valuable enough to litigate over.
The commission
American sales roles are frequently paid mostly or entirely on commission, with no ceiling. The earnings are a direct function of output, and the arrangement is regarded as motivating rather than insecure.
Black Friday
An American retail event organised around the proposition that prices are movable, announced weeks in advance, and treated as a national occasion. The same goods, the same shops, a different number.
Name Your Own Price
Priceline built a business on inverting the transaction: the customer states a figure and the seller decides whether to take it. The mechanism only makes sense in a market where nobody believes the listed price is the real one.
Haggling
To haggle. A German verb with an unmistakable register — markets, bazaars, small sums, and a slight contempt. No German professional describes their own negotiating as Feilschen. It is what other people do.
The Nordstrom handbook
The American retailer’s employee handbook became famous for its brevity: use good judgment in all situations, and there will be no additional rules. Whether the card was quite that short is argued about. That it became an American business legend tells you what the audience wanted to believe.
OBO
Or Best Offer. Three letters appended to a price in American classified advertising, on Craigslist, in shop windows, on cars parked with a sign. The seller publishes a number and an invitation to ignore it in the same breath.