I am looking at possibly buying an MX-350 or MX-500. I stumbled across some posts in this forum that confused me, related to "authorized" vs. "unauthorized" dealers.

Do I understand the following correctly? If I buy an MX-500 or MX-350 from Amazon, URC will not honor any warrantee on the thing? And this is because these two models are considered "professional"? But if they were "consumer", then URC would warrant them? I don't see anything on the "professional" MX-350 that looks harder to program than the "consumer" RF20. Nothing that would make me think URC would void the warrantee if it weren't professionally programmed.

I can understand watching who you buy from if you're dealing with eBay scammers, but I'm not used to having to worry about voided warrantees when buying new product from large mainstream retailers like Amazon. Who would think to check online forums and company websites before buying a product at retail? I just stumbled onto this by accident.

Please let me know if I really understood what I thought I read about URC policies.

Correct. Not exactly because they're considered "professional" either.

Unless you buy from an authorized dealer, you won't get warranty or support from the company. And that's ANY company. Not just URC.

Thanks for the reply and confirmation!

I guess the misunderstanding I have regarding this, is that who would ever know who is and who is not an authorized dealer? The assumption is that any normal, large, and well respected retailer would be OK. How does Amazon get these things to sell if they're not authorized? I could understand the policy if I bought from some shady online retailer from a 3rd world country ... but that's not the case here.

It's just a really unexpected policy for me to hear about. Do people normally go check manufacturer (as opposed to retailer) websites for warrantee policy when buying everyday items? I really don't care much about support, that's pretty much non-existent these days anyway, I would only expect manufacturers to handle warrantee repair/replacement of defective product.

Maybe URC doesn't have any manufacturer warrantee at all? (I don't know, I'm asking). Do they depend totally on 3rd party or retailer warrantees? That would be a rare exception in these times, where even a 20 cent Bic pen probably comes with manufacturer warrantee info on its packaging. (Who would actually send a cheap pen in for warrantee work?, but it's available.)