[Off-topic] papo:
thanks for your reply, to be honest I wasn't expecting distinguished replies to my disagreement and wasn't following this thread anymore, but just found out I missjudged this usually bloated 'General' forum, and you guys here.

I happened to know people running PC and electronics retail store which in time became one of the biggest in europe and from there I know about some ways they're following. Secondary, I am a reseller, buying there, selling to end-users not a big store, but I have few hundred sold items.

I didn't have a case of bricked device, so it's just a theory of what I might do and what might happen.

The first thing is warranties are different, what I have to warrant, might not be the same what retail did to me, and it's not the same what manufacturer warrant to retailer. Sometimes there is a gap, where my warranty is over, but I still need to warrant. the same for retailer. Another thing is two weeks money back with no reason. This is seller decision, they have to know its worth to them. They have to sell refused item as refurbished, or sometimes manufacturer is doing repacking, so they can send it there for a price to have it as new again. But it might happen that manufacturer will not even know something went wrong with a device.

But let's say it will go through to them.

Now it depends on what's the claimed thing and the brand what kind of service they offer, sometimes retailer just send it there and they send back fixed all in a week. Many times manufacturer will say ok throw it to rubbish we'll discount it for you. For them, posting would be higher then material. Or some good brand laptops I was sending directly to manufacturers by UPS and were back in three days, all costs covered, even without retail shop.

So it depends, but in most cases, you wait and quite a lot. Then you better try to fix yourself or give a new item, when the warrantied item is back, you sell it as refurbished, or if it's something like a processor from PC, you'll just use it in a new PC you're selling. It's not really a loss to sell with discount, you can attract some people who just seeks discounts like this and it will still make profit anyway in most cases. But the loss on discounted item goes to shop, not manufacturer. And shop can't dictate prices as there are many shops selling the same model and concurrency would keep the price nearly the same between them. Still, I would sell with 10% loss, better to avoid uncovered time on the end of my warranty, where many customers just postpone to last days some long time issues.

But let's say this tablet has nice warranty service and they'll send it back fixed in a week and even extend my warranty for that time and I am at no loss.

Manufacturers have different ways to fix broken devices. They have different priorities, for them parts are cheap and labor expensive. Once I got back a brand new laptop, there was only keyboard and speaker issue. They might have changed those, but they just put old disk in a new laptop. And warranty was about to end too. No idea why they did that.

Basically, on more expensive devices, they'll try to fix issue, but they don't care too much if plugging it on their tester will not show exact easy to fix problem, they would strip the board for most expensive items to reuse them and move on. On the end, they don't loose too much, just some labor and parts all together in a value of maybe $5 - $20 on parts they don't bother to recycle and new housing. It's expensive to design new model, to make matrices for circuit boards, to program all the machines and teach all those people how to make this new model. To design new box, packing, teach sellers how to present it, manuals in 100 languages, software, drivers.. I have this contract, every time there is a new tablet model we get paid for new translation of it's functions plus they'll give us two of them and never want them back, never cared. That's how they value it. Price of final material on most of parts used inside is close to zero. Unless the broken part is one of those they don't do internally but on contract, like the screen it wouldn't bother them more, than they would be afraid on having bad reputation for too many warranty claims.

Moreover in case of failed flashing, they must have a way how to reflash straight to the chip or even from testing points. All their costs are labor and shipping.

There must be a way around, maybe the item is not considered as used if it's manufactured using few recycled parts, or maybe they just do it against the rules as there is no way how someone can proof something from it was already used. And they are somewhere in China. Or they might be using recycled parts only to fix another warranty claims and sending back as warranty fixed devices and not as new ones. Or just using those parts to supply repairment stores.

I guess one of those last two. Still, there is no full input costs waste on manufacturer side.

yes, you see this point exactly here. But sellers loosing here, not manufacturers. And sellers can't rise the price. They may have let customer wait if the country law don't have warranty claim time limit. I remember times we haven't and customer were waiting half year and blaming the brand, never wanting the same again.

yes, we agreed on this. they might close some holes, I just wouldnt say so much because of losses in money, but in reputation. And I can't imagine a way how to make custom flashing totally impossible while still having option for normal update flashing. Well it might be possible to achieve, but I would say to come with such an unbreakable system would be more costly option then to make changes which will make device unbrickable.

Your example with chairs makes sense. and it exactly reminded me of few things which are no more. I just guess your connecting together manufacturer with stores thinking of them as one entity, they are not, and while store may want to rise price because of troubles and losses they have with one device, for manufacturer it's a different thing. They may even lower price to reflect on those troubles stores are having. But while the device is demanded, they will not as the store will buy and sell them anyway.

Other thing is misusing warranty, the system is too benevolent, those should at least suffer by waiting the time their own device will get back or by paying for postage. But not again extrem, like the full price of device, throwing it to rubish. manufacturer should take care too of having it fool-proof cos that's what most of users are. And what can they expect if they encourage them to reflash updates by themselves that they wouldn't just try to run anything they'll find on internet without double thinking or reading instructions?