Buy it for life

I bought this house in 1986. I built the bathroom and installed a shower stall.
At the advice of the local plumber I bought and installed a quality moen shower valve.
All hard plumbed with copper pipe.
A few weeks ago Liz mentioned that the shower was dripping...
I checked and it seemed to have stopped.
Another week goes by. Its 2 am I'm in the bathroom and I hear drip drip drip
Puck puck puck you was my response to the inanimate object...
Today I pulled out the shower valve (painless job) hoping for debri blocking the seal...hope in this hand and xxxx in the other ... ya no debri

Well shit guess I'll be buying a new cartridge.
Our sink has a moen faucet. It regularly starts dripping. pull the valve clean out the debri and wala no more drip. Why couldn't the shower cooperate?

I call customer service at moen. Tell the nice english speaking lady about our drip.
She asks, do I know when this was installed?
Yup installed by me in 1986.
What model # is it? ... (in my head) How the fuck would I know... (on the phone) well mam its sort of soldered inside the wall.
No problem, how many knobs? one... does it twist to turn on? No.. pulls then twists,
Ok I have that I'll send it off today!
Still under warranty 34 years later!
That's quality

Thanks for sharing.  One of the hardest lessons for me to learn was to shop for quality .....  and service was often more important than the product.  Of course, this becomes more problematic when one is young and broke.

I expected this story to end with "and then I had to buy a new one."

I'm glad the story had a happy ending.

My experience with Moen has also been stellar. I would take a leaking cartridge to a plumbing shop and they would exchange it for a new one, no questions asked. Wow.

(Another company that does this is Leatherman. It's a genuine 25 year warranty. Fill out the return request and mail it to them, and they'll make it right. No receipts, no nonsense.)

Hi, Glad to hear about the warranty Moen has. Its' good to know there are more companies than American Standard who stand by their products. But as you have alluded to, you pay for that service. Copper, brass, ceramic valves come with a slightly larger price-tag to get that lifetime warranty. The cheap plastic ones do not, maybe 3-5yrs is all you will get.

I always spend the extra money now for a better quality product. I've had handles replaced because the plating wore off, and complete faucets replaced because the ball valve wore out with over-usage. Spent 10 dollars more and saved 200.