OPINION
It’s Time We Read The Small Print Out Loud
Too many hot tub warranties lead with a big headline number and quietly bury the detail that matters most to the buyer. Here, Xavier Labelle from Canadian Spa Company UK, argues the industry would earn more trust by being straight about what warranties actually cover
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customer walks into a showroom and is told the hot tub comes with a ‘ten-year warranty’. They relax. It sounds like a decade of peace of mind. What many don’t discover until much later – sometimes not until something actually fails – is that the ten years applies only to the shell structure against water loss and that the parts and labour cover itself – the element that fixes a failed pump or heater – runs for a fraction of that time. The number on the banner and the warranty cover in practice turn out to be two different things. I don’t think that’s usually dishonesty. Layered warranties are normal and sensible: the acrylic body, the working parts and the electronics genuinely fail in different ways and over different timescales, so it makes sense to cover them differently. The problem isn’t the structure of the cover offered. It’s that, as an industry, we tend to lead with the longest, most flattering layer and leave the customer to find the rest in the small print. In a market where buyers are more informed and more sceptical than ever, that gap is doing us real harm.
THE QUESTIONS HAVE CHANGED We’ve seen the shift first-hand. Two years ago, buyers walked in asking about price and brand. Now they arrive asking what the warranty actually covers if a pump fails in year three, how long parts and labour really last and whether the cover is conditional on anything. Some turn up with spreadsheets. They’ve read the forums and heard the horror stories and they are no longer reassured by a big number – they want to know what it means. That shift is good news for anyone prepared to answer plainly and awkward for anyone relying on the headline to do the selling. The brands that do well over the next few years will be the ones that explain their warranty and the cover it offers before they’re asked, not the ones hoping nobody reads to the end.
THE CLAUSE NOBODY MENTIONS There’s a second issue that deserves more daylight: the mandatory annual service. A number of warranties only stay valid if the owner pays for a manufacturer service every single year. Miss one and the cover is void. The service is presented as protecting the customer, but in practice it can be a recurring charge dressed up as a condition of the warranty they have already bought. An annual service is a good idea – I’d recommend one for the long-term health of any spa. But there’s a difference between recommending good maintenance and making your warranty contingent on the customer handing you money every year. One builds trust; the other quietly erodes it. If cover can be voided by a missed invoice, it was never quite the reassurance the headline implied.
WHAT HONEST WARRANTY COVER LOOKS LIKE None of this is hard to fix. It just means saying out loud what most warranties only say in the small print. For our part, we’ve tried to keep it simple: two years of parts and labour covering the shell, pump, heater and control system, fitted anywhere in the UK, with no annual service required to keep it active; and,
A warranty and the cover it provides should reassure the customer on the day they buy and still mean what they thought it meant three years later” 72 June 2026 SPN 72_SPN_June_2026_Opinion.indd 72
separately and as standard, ten years against water loss through the shell. If someone wants longer, they can extend the parts and labour cover and even stack it – but that’s an option they choose, not a clause we spring on them. The full terms are written to be read on our website and the point is simply that they’re meant to be understood, not decoded. I’m not pretending ours is the only fair approach or that we get everything right. The wider point is that clarity is a choice – and it’s one more of us should be making.
COMPETING ON CLARITY The wet leisure industry spends a lot of energy competing on specification – jets, insulation, smart controls – and rightly so. But there’s a quieter competition we’ve been slower to embrace: competing on honesty. A warranty and the cover it provides should reassure the customer on the day they buy and still mean what they thought it meant three years later. When it doesn’t, the customer doesn’t just blame one brand; they lose a little faith in all of us. We have a genuinely good story to tell as an industry. Our products improve people’s health, their homes and their downtime. It would be a shame to undermine that with paperwork a customer needs a magnifying glass to trust. Reading the small print out loud costs nothing – and it might be the most persuasive thing any of us does this year. Canadian Spa Company UK 01293 824094 www.canadianspacompany.co.uk
www.swimmingpoolnews.co.uk 09/06/2026 20:06