I had a one year old HTC Desire which malfunctioned under warranty (Europe here = 2yrs mandatory) and sought to return it to them for repair. They were a huge pain in the ass, refusing to pay shipping to the repair depot despite this being explicitly covered, and so I asked Amazon (from whom I bought it) for assistance dealing with HTC. Totally shocked when Amazon told me 'No problem, here's a free shipping label, send it back to us for a full refund. The price was hundreds of pounds less by then and they refunded the original price. It was in pretty good shape but not at all in 'like new' condition. I immediately bought another from them and kept the difference - they weren't interested in just exchanging it.
Fast forward to now, and it's pretty much the same deal with LG and a defective Nexus 4. LG agreed in writing to reimburse shipping prior to me sending it, but now want to change the terms & added an NDA and are illegally withholding payment[1] of their debt. I contacted Amazon again and they told me the same deal: 'Send it in for a full refund any time, no problem'.
Needless to say, I now buy all electronics on Amazon. This is probably their goal and we're both okay with it. As for HTC and LG, at least in the UK, they are bastards and I'll keep hoping for better support from other manufacturers when I can.
They are. We once purchased a PS3 controller from Amazon Marketplace. It turned out to be a counterfeit, but we didn't notice until 3/4 year later when Sony disabled many counterfeit controllers. We contacted Amazon to warn about this seller. They didn't only remove the seller from Marketplace, they also gave us a full refund.
Amazon ‘sold‘ you that warranty, not Toshiba. Granted, it is a warranty, hence supposed to be directed at the manufacturer, not the merchant, but it still cannot hurt to ask Amazon – in the EU, you could go to them directly without a warranty from Toshiba and ask them to repair/replace it (up to two years after purchase), but customer law in Latin America likely varies.
Haven't needed to do it with anything pricey though, but again it doesn't hurt to ask.
