How long was the parts warranty that Axess offered before?
Trombatore: It used to be 6 months. Basically, our data was showing us that we were not having any failures of significance for 1 year, so we thought that we would extend the warranty period. That’s really what the basis of the decision was—that there’s very little risk of parts failing in that period of time. And we knew that our customers would be impressed and intrigued with the change. MI: Why doesn’t Axess offer a full-year warranty on transducers? Is it just because they take more abuse? Trombatore: A lot of it depends on the particular customer and the particular type of transducer. We have some customers who never go through multiple probes. They realize how expensive and fragile they are, and they treat them like they’re made out of gold. Conse-quently, we seldom have to replace any. However, we have other customers, particularly those in hospital environments or mobile groups, who go through probes constantly. That’s the nature of the beast; they have a lot of drops. The data
