I’m in the market for a fence. It be so very nice to be able to let my dog out into the back yard instead of walking him on a leash. So we looked up a fence contractor, picked out a fence, and had our pen out to sign on the dotted line, when my wife asked a great question:

What’s the warranty on this fence?

The answer was: There is a lifetime warranty. That’s pretty sweet, right? Hard to go wrong with that. The natural question I had was, “Whose lifetime and how does it work?” These are the things that I’m curious about. Could I have my 6-month old put his hand print on the contract and funnel the payment through his bank account?

Turns out that the warranty is for the owner of the house, so that won’t work. As our home, is co-owned, I assume that it’s the lifetime of whoever lives longer, but maybe I should read the details on that.

The thing that really struck me as odd though, is that the warranty is void if we sell the house to someone else. This just didn’t seem right to me. The fence company shouldn’t care who lives in the house. They shouldn’t get out easy if I’m house flipper. Furthermore, if we do sell the house, the fence is an asset, and it would nice if that asset some time left on the warranty.

In the end, it probably doesn’t matter too much. The warranty only covers defects and I think those would be evident relatively quickly. The thing that’s mostly likely to be a problem is the weather, and acts of God aren’t covered in the warranty.

Readers, should I look for a different fence company or just suck it up and deal?