NOTE 8 – WARRANTIES

The Company provides warranties on certain merchandise it sells with warranty periods ranging from 30 days to limited lifetime warranties. Estimated warranty costs are based on the historical failure rate of each individual product line and are recorded as obligations. The Company’s historical experience has been that failure rates are relatively consistent over time and that the ultimate cost of warranty claims to the Company has been driven by volume of units sold as opposed to fluctuations in failure rates or the variation of the cost of individual claims. The Company’s product warranty liabilities are included in “Other current liabilities” on the accompanying Consolidated Balance Sheets as of December 31, 2012 and 2011.

The following table identifies the changes in the Company’s aggregate product warranty liabilities for the years ended December 31, 2012 and 2011 (in thousands):




	2012		2011
Balance at January 1,	$	21,642	$	22,429
Warranty claims		(50,009)		(46,779)
Warranty accruals		56,368		45,992
Balance at December 31,	$	28,001	$	21,642