Karran Faucets Review & Rating Updated: March 21, 2024

Imported

China

Vietnam

Karran USA Inc.

1291 East Ramsey Road

Vincennes, IN 47591

(866) 452-7726

info@karran.com

Rating

Business Type

For more information on the five fau­cet company business types, see Faucet Companies

Product Range

Kitchen and Bath Faucets

Certifications

Brands

Karran

Street Price

$124 - $400

Warranty Score

Cartridge

Lifetime of the Faucet¹

Finishes

Lifetime of the Faucet

Mechanical Parts

Lifetime of the Faucet>

Proof of Purchase

Required

Transferable

No

Meets U.S. Warranty
Law Requirements

No

Warranty Footnotes:

1. All parts of a faucet including aerators, finishes, hoses, sprays, and valve cartridges have a "lifetime of the Product" warranty.

• Download/Read/Print the the Karran faucet warranty.
• Learn more about faucet warranties.

Karran In Brief

Karran USA imports and distributes kitchen and bathroom fau­cets, which it sells through local showrooms, contractors, and online through several websites.

The faucets are manufactured in China and Vietnam by ISO-9001-certified manufacturers with good international reputations.

They are well-made, fitted with reliable ceramic valve cartridges and state-of-the-art aerators, supported by capable customer service and a "Lifetime of the Product" warranty.

The warranty has some flaws but is one of the stronger warranties offered in the fau­cet industry.

The company does not provide enough information about its faucets on its website to support a fully informed buying decision. We score the website 54 out of 100 points for faucet information, a failing score.

Karran USA is famous in the kitchen remodeling industry as the originator of the sink that can be integrated seamlessly in high-density laminate (i.e., Formica^®) countertops.

The Karran integrated sink, invented by Chad Michael Lusimano and patented worldwide changed all that in the first years of the 21st century.

It can be permanently installed in laminate countertops using a patented installation process and an acrylic adhesive called me­thyl meth­a­cry­late injected between the sink and the countertop.

The process forms a virtually unbreakable bond that holds the sink in place and makes it impossible for water to seep under the laminate.

The company has expanded the types of sinks that can be installed in laminated countertops from its original acrylic sinks to stainless steel and stone-look composite sinks.

To say that Karran's invention was a revolution in kitchen design may be an overstatement, but if so, it's not much of an overstatement.

It opened up an entirely new world of remodeling possibilities using relatively inexpensive laminated countertops.

The Company

According to the company, Kar­ran started business in the "late 1990s." At the time, its business was the importation of Plexicor fiberglass-backed acrylic sinks from South Africa. The sinks were promoted internationally for their "exceptional resistance" to staining.

Karran, then at 1422 E. Elk­horn Road in Vin­cennes, was identified as Plex­i­cor's distribution center. Plexcor's head office in Mary­land was managed by Mark Web­ster, a South African native. He is now a Kar­ran owner and its marketing manager.

By 2007 Karran had introduced its acrylic seamless sinks in white or bisque and created a website to promote the products. By 2010 it had added stainless steel and quartz sinks to its seamless lineup.

The company was incorporated in Indiana as Kar­ran USA, Inc. in 2014. It is headed by Eric Niehaus, its CEO.

The Niehaus family has been involved in the retail building products in the Vin­cennes area for de­cades, owning the Nie­haus Lum­ber Com­pa­ny since around 1933.

Karran USA is largely a family affair with several Nie­haus kin in various management positions.

Faucets were not added to Karran's lineup of products until 2020. At first, it sold only kitchen faucets, adding lavatory fau­cets a year later.

In addition to its integrated sinks, Kar­ran sells all of the usual sink configurations: top-mount, undermount, and sink workstations.

Its flagship product, however, is still its integrated seamless sinks, the products that made the company's reputation. It sells these in large numbers and will likely continue to do so until at least 2031 when its patent expires.

Faucets were not added to its product line until 2020. At first, it sold only kitchen fau­cets, adding lavatory fau­cets a year later.

Where to Buy Karran Faucets

Karran products are not sold on the Kar­ran website. The company is a distributor, not a retailer. It does not compete with its dealers. Its website is for information only.

Its products are available locally from plumbing and kitchen showrooms, interior decorators, remodeling contractors, and plumbers.

The Kar­ran website has a showroom guide for finding brick-and-mortar retail sources near you.

Karran fau­cets are also available at online sellers, including:

Karran's Manufacturers

Karran presents itself as "a leading manufacturer of kitchen sinks and fau­cets."

Karran, however, does not manufacture faucets and makes only a few of its sinks.

It manufactures its patented seamless acrylic sinks in Indiana from sheet material supplied by Perspex International in the UK. The rest of its sinks and all of its fau­cets are manufactured overseas and imported.

We have identified sink suppliers from…

Its faucets are all made in Asia.

Chinese Faucet Manufacturers

We know of three of its Chinese manufacturers all of which are companies of good repute internationally, certified to the ISO-9001 international quality assurance standard, These include:

• (Guangdong) Cae Sanitary Fittings Industry Co., Ltd.

• Founded in 1989, CAE (also trading as Xi'an Sanitary Fittings Industry Co. Ltd.) has a solid international reputation for making good-quality fau­cets.

• Some of CAE's contemporary fau­cets are designed in Italy by Itamar Harari of Slide Design, a noted Italian design firm. CAE is known for casting its fau­cets from DZR brass, an alloy that resists a chemical degradation process called dezincification.

• In addition to manufacturing for Kar­ran, CAE makes fau­cets sold by

• (Guangdong) Huayi Plumbing Fittings Co., Ltd.
• Huayi Plumbing is a division of the giant Huayi International Industrial Group Co., Ltd..

• The Huayi Group is a collection of companies involved in some manner in metal fabrication. These also include Kaiping Freendo Sanitary Ware Co., Ltd., Kaiping Euopea Plumbing Apparatus Co., and Giada Star Sanitary Ware Co., all of which manufacture plumbing products.

• Huayi manufactures fau­cets for a veritable who's who of North Amer­i­can fau­cet companies. Some of these are

• (Kaiping City) Aidier Sanitary Ware Co. Ltd.

• Aidier is a relative newcomer to the North Amer­i­can fau­cet market. It manufactures high-quality fau­cets. As Kaipiang Aida Sanitary Ware, it sells plumbing fittings under the registered Aidea^®, Aida^®, and Idea brands, primarily in Europe and Asia.

• It also manufactures fau­cets for and some of the *economy and mid-priced fau­cets distributed by to retailers like the True Value hardware buying cooperative and

Vietnamese Faucet Manufacturer

Karran has reportedly begun importing fau­cets from Vietnam. These are, however, not in stores as of the date of this report.

The most likely manufacturer is Công Ty TNHH Ital­i­sa Viêt Nam, located northeast of Ha­noi.

Trading internationally as Ital­i­sa, it is building a reputation as a quality manufacturer. Its fau­cets are fully certified to North American standards, Wat­er­sense^® listed, and Cal­Green^® compliant.

In the past five eyears, Italisa has vastly expanded its North American customers. The most prominent include

Karran Faucet Materials & Construction

The primary materials used in Kar­ran fau­cets are brass and zinc alloys. Secondary materials are zinc alloys and at least two types of plastic.

The company does not offer any stainless steel faucets. Those that appear to be stainless steel are actually brass or zinc given a Stainless Steel finish. Internal company documents indicate that the spouts on some kitchen faucets are stainless steel.

Brass

Brass is the traditional primary fau­cet material for two reasons:

• Brass is strong but easy to work with. It casts, forges, and machines with relative ease.

• Brass is naturally anti-microbial. The copper in brass kills bacteria, retarding the build-up of potentially hazardous microbes inside a fau­cet.

Brass has one serious drawback, however. Traditional brass contains metallic lead.

Ordinary (Alpha) brass is a blend of copper and zinc with a small amount of lead (1.5% - 3.5%) added to make the material more malleable, less brittle, and easier to fabricate.

Lead, however, is now all but banned in North Amer­i­ca in any drinking water component due to its toxicity to humans, particularly children.

According to the En­vir­on­ment­al Prot­ec­tion Agen­cy (EPA), lead, even in small amounts, causes slowed growth, learning disorders, hearing loss, anemia, hyperactivity, and behavior issues.

Before 2014, a fau­cet sold in the U.S. or Can­a­da could contain as much as 8% lead and still call itself lead-free.

Now the maximum lead content of those parts of a fau­cet that touch water is 0.25% (1/4 of 1%), basically just a bare trace. In fact, there may be more lead in the air you breathe than there is in a fau­cet that has been certified lead-free.

Lead-Free Brass

To comply with the restrictions on lead, today's fau­cet brass replaces lead with other additives to reduce brittleness without adding toxicity. The most common is bismuth.

Bismuth is similar to lead – right next to lead on the periodic table of elements – but it is not harmful to humans.

It is, however, very rare – 300 times rarer than lead and even rarer than silver, which is why bismuth-brass alloys are much more expensive than leaded brass.

This increased cost has encouraged many fau­cet manufacturers to use substitute materials where possible.

Zinc & Zinc/Aluminum Alloys

Most manufacturers have turned to zinc and zinc-aluminum (ZA) alloys as a substitute for brass where appropriate.

Zinc is not as strong as brass and does not resist water pressure as well as brass. However, its use in non-pressurized parts of a brass fau­cet such as handles, base and wall plates, and is common even among manufacturers of luxury fau­cets.

Core and Shell Construction

The adoption of core and shell construction in the fauce industry has increased the use of zinc alloys in faucets.

In a conventional fau­cet, the body and spout do double duty. Tney give the fau­cet its appearance and style. But, they are also the components through which water moves inside the fau­cet.

The two roles are separated in core and shell construction.

The spout and body are merely a decorative shell that gives the faucet its appearance. The valve and tubes inside the shell are the core of the faucet that controls and directs water. Water never touches the shell.

The tubes are usually copper, reinforced rubber, or cross-linked polyethylene (PEX). Typically they extend all the way from the shutoff valve under the sink to the tip of the spout as one continuous channel broken only by the valve.

Other than reducing or eliminating the need for expensive lead-free brass, core and shell construction offers several advantages:

• It reduces the number of connections needed in the water channel, decreasing the risk of leaks.

• It reduces constraints on fau­cet design.

• In traditional fau­cet construction, the design of the fau­cet can affect how the fau­cet works. Designers have to be constantly aware of the interplay between their design and the operation of the fau­cet.

• With core and shell, the function of the fau­cet is wholly contained within the core. The shell has nothing to do with the operation of the fau­cet. Designers are free to concentrate on how the shell looks rather than how it works, giving them more design flexibility.

• One core can support many different shells. A completely different look requires replacing just the shell rather than the whole fau­cet. (See the review of faucets for more information.)

• It eliminates the shell as a structural element. It is no longer under pressure. It can be a thin-walled skin which cuts down on the amount of metal needed.
• Brass used to make the shell does not need to be lead-free since water never touches it. Nor does the shell need to be brass. A zinc alloy can work just as well at a lower cost.

Many of Karran's fau­cets are made using core and shell. Huayi has adopted the method for its pulldown, pullout, and pre-rinse fau­cets with a core of tubing that Karran identifies as "lead-free brass" and the valve covered by a shell made from a zinc alloy.

The zinc fau­cets include those listed below but almost certainly there are others:

• Kitchen Faucets
• Adlington KKF360 Pre-Rinse
• Auburn KKF310 Pulldown
• Brampton KKF365 Pulldown
• Chantilly KKF375 Two-hole pulldown
• Elwood KKF330 Pulldown
• Kadoma KKF340 Pulldown
• Kentland KKF320 Pulldown
• Lagrange KKF350 Pulldown
• Sherman KKF370 Single Handle
• Lavatory Faucets
• Randburg KBF520 Single Handle
• Randburg KBF524 Widespread
• Randburg KBF526 Centerset
• Gillingham KBF536 Centerset
• Gillingham KBF534 Widespread

Plastics

Plastic is the other commonly used substitute material.

It may be safely used in incidental parts like base plates and shrouds and has been largely trouble-free in aerators and as casings for ceramic cartridges, but otherwise, its use is suspect, especially if under water pressure.

Among those suspect uses is in the spray heads of Karran kitchen fau­cets.

The plastics most often used are Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) and Po­ly­ox­y­meth­y­lene (POM). These materials are low-cost, easily manufactured, non-toxic, immune to most household chemicals, and impact-resistant.

In fau­cet sprays, plastics have definite advantages.

• Plastic does not get uncomfortably hot in use like metal wands;

• Plastic is not as heavy and is more comfortable to hold for long periods of time; and

• Plastic is a lot cheaper than brass or stainless steel – even cheaper than zinc.

The disadvantage of plastics, however, is that they degrade over time and can cause a spray to fail.

The plastics are more durable than they once were. Materials engineers and chemists have made significant improvements to their reliability over the past few decades. The problems have not been entirely resolved, however.

Better wands are made of metal, insulated against excessive heat transmission. These are, however, more expensive and typically found only in high-end fau­cets.

The Sure Cure for Too-Hot Spray Wands: The simple cure for spray wands that get too hot is to reduce the temperature of the water. Dishes do not need to be rinsed in scalding water.

Karran Faucet Components

The critical components used in Kar­ran fau­cets are ceramic valve cartridges and aerators.

Valve Cartridges

The ceramic valve cartridges used in Kar­ran fau­cets are made by at least three different technical ceramics manufacturers. Each of Kar­ran's fau­cet manufacturers seems to have a favorite valve.

Kerox and Yizan cartridges are universal configuration cartridges developed by Italian ceramics manufacturer, Gal­a­tron Plast S.p.a. starting around 1980. Simple in design, easy to manufacture, and very reliable, the Gal­a­tron designs have become over time the de fac­to standard for most of the fau­cet industry.

They are available from any number of sellers of after-market cartridges, so a replacement from a company that sells in North Amer­i­ca should not be hard to find should the cartridge ever fail.

Valve Cartridge Testing

The standard North Amer­ican cartridge life-cycle stress test requires operating the cartridges through 500,000 cycles under 60 pounds per square inch (psi) of water pressure^[1] without a single failure. That's not a typo, a full half-million cycles are required.

How to "Fix" a Ceramic Valve Cartridge

If a ceramic valve cartridge leaks right out of the box, it is defective and the cause is probably a manufacturing error. A warranty claim will get it replaced.

If it starts to drip after several years, the problem is probably not a mechanical fault. It is just clogged up with mineral deposits accumulated over the years from hard water.

The two ceramic discs that shut the water off no longer mesh perfectly, allowing a few drops of water to slip through.

To return it to full functionality, removing the lime scale buildup is usually all that is required.

Here is how that can be done:

• Remove the cartridge following the instructions in your fau­cet manual. (You did keep your faucet manual, didn't you?)
• Soak the cartridge for up to 30 minutes in a solution of 50% household vinegar and 50% water. Swish it around a few times and twist the stem a few times to ensure that the mixture gets drawn well inside the cartridge and to loosen the deposits.

• While you are waiting, take an old toothbrush soaked in the vinegar/water mixture and clean the cavity in the fau­cet that holds the cartridge. Wipe it dry with a clean cloth.
• Rinse the cartridge thoroughly in clean cold water.
• Lubricate the O-ring(s) and rubber washers with silicon plumber's grease.
• Reinstall the cartridge.

If the mineral build-up is substantial, you may have to do this more than once.

At one cycle per second, the test takes six days to complete.

A second cartridge test, informally known as the "burst test," subjects the cartridges to a water pressure surge of 500 psi – 10 times typical household water pressure for one minute.

If the cartridge leaks or deforms under this pressure, it fails.

In other countries, the standards are much less rigorous

The Eur­o­pe­an (EN 817) life-cycle test is just 70,000 cycles and the Chin­ese requirement (GB18145), a mere 30,000 cycles.

Aerators

Faucet used to be simple devices, generally several layers of aluminum or copper mesh, that merely added a little air to soften the water stream so it would not splash out of the sink.

Today, however, better aerators are precision devices engineered. In most of its fau­cets, Kar­ran uses aerators made by the Swiss-based Neoperl, the inventor of the modern aerator.

Apart from smoothing the stream of water emitted by a fau­cet, modern aerators also limit water volume to the lower flows required by federal and state water conservation laws and to prevent backflow that can result in the contamination of household drinking water.

It is important, therefore, that this little device, often smaller than a dime, is the best available, and with Neoperl, Karran has one of the very best.

Karran Faucet Design and Styling

Karran maintains that it designs its fau­cets. However, neither the fau­cets nor the company displays the earmarks of a true designer fau­cet company.

Karran owns no design patents, has not entered any fau­cets in international design competitions, and has not identified a single designer. Nor does it charge the prices that true designer fau­cets command.

Customization

What it does is more accurately called customization.

Almost any manufacturer offers customization options, and that includes the three manufacturers from which Kar­ran obtains its fau­cets. Some manufacturers, like even offer customization to their retail customers.

Faucet elements, including spouts and handles, are frequently interchangeable, allowing for a wide variety of configurations to be created without modifying the fau­cet's mechanics.

It is simply a matter of swapping components, sort of like ordering in a Chin­ese restaurant: take one spout from column A, a handle from column B, then select a spray head from column C, to create a distinctive fau­cet from a basic design.

Customization allows manufacturers to offer distributors their basic fau­cets in many different guises so they don't end up competing to sell the exact same fau­cet in the same market.

Customization is cheap. Original design is costly,

The creativity of top product designers is expensive. Designers charge up to $400 an hour for their services and $100,000 for a design is not that unusual.

A new design must also be prototyped and tested to see if it works and will pass testing for certification. Prototyping has gotten a lot faster and much less expensive with the advent of 3D printers, but it is still not cheap.

Manufacturing the fau­cet requires molds, and mold-making is an exacting process requiring highly skilled machinists. They typically cost between $4,000 and $8,000 for each part cast, and a fau­cet has an average of seven cast parts.

The cost of customization is, by comparison, very small.

Customized fau­cets are already known to work. They have been prototyped and most have already passed at least one round of testing and certification. Molds for the various components already exist in the manufacturer's inventory.

Manufacturers may charge a small premium over the price of the basic fau­cet but that's about the only additional cost to buyers like Kar­ran.

Mainstream Design

Even with customization, however, Kar­ran's fau­cets do not depart very far from the mainstream of fau­cet design. They are attractive enough but include no styling adventures.

It's not that Chinese manufacturers cannot produce original designs. A few, like CAE (for its Edolo fau­cet (designed by Yoan Huang) have won prestigious design awards in highly competitive international design competitions. But original Chinese designs are still fairly rare.

The goal of Chinese fau­cet manufacturers is to sell as many fau­cets as possible, which means keeping their styles well within prevailing designs to appeal to as many potential buyers as possible.

Striking original designs may win awards and generate publicity but they don't necessarily sell all that well.

Most Asian designs are copies of styles originating in Eur­ope or North Amer­ica.

A style that sells well in these major markets will often be imitated by Asian factories (with minor changes to avoid patent infringement). The lag time is usually 3 to 5 years, so by the time a design appears in a Chinese fau­cet, it is no longer particularly new.

Karran fau­cet designs fit this pattern. They are pleasant and often smartly styled, but many of the basic designs are over a decade old and some are well past voting age.

Karran Faucet Finishes

Karran offers eight finishes on its fau­cets: Chrome, Stainless Steel, Gunmetal Grey, Matte Black, Oil-Rubbed Bronze, Brushed Copper, Brushed Gold, and (Polished) Gold.

The finishes on a faucet are limited to whatever its manufacturer can provide. So, no Karran fau­cet is available in all eight finishes. Most offer two to four finish choices. Six is the largest number of finishes that we found for a single model.

Some of Karran's Oil-Rubbed Bronze includes copper highlights. In the not-so-distant past, would have been called vintage bronze or antique bronze. Whether ORB includes copper highlights depends on the manufacturer. Some do and some don't.

Where the website identifies the process used to create its finishes, it uniformly identifies the process as "Durable PVD." However, according to the internal documentation we obtained from the company, Chrome is electroplated. Matte Black, Gunmetal Grey, and Oil-Rubbed Bronze finishes are powder coats. Copper, the Golds, and Stainless are PVD coatings.

Electroplating

involves immersing fau­cet components and the metal to be used as plating in an acid bath, then applying an electrical charge to both objects so metallic ions are drawn from the plating metal to the components.

Usually, multiple coats are applied, one or more undercoats, and then two or more coats of the finish metal.

The top coat may be polished or brushed. Chrome, a relatively hard metal, is usually polished to a high shine. Nickel, a softer metal, is usually brushed to help hide the inevitable minor scratches.

Physical Vapor Deposition

Physical vapor deposition (PVD) is one of the latest space-age fau­cet finishing technologies, rapidly replacing electroplating as the finish of choice.

Although the technology was discovered in the 19th century, it was not used in industry until the 1950s, and then only rarely due to its great expense. Today, the technology is everywhere, and the machinery required is getting smaller, faster, and cheaper all the time.

To create a PVD coating, a sealed chamber is loaded with unfinished fau­cet components. All the air is removed and replaced by a carefully calculated mix of nitrogen or argon and reactive gases.

A rod of the metal to be used for the coating is heated to a temperature so high that the metal dissolves into individual atoms. The atoms mix with the various reactive gases to get the desired color and finish effects and are then deposited in a very thin film – 2 to 5 – on the fau­cets.

Different finish colors and effects are created by varying the mix of reactive gases in the chamber.

Titanium in its natural state is a dull silver color. But when combined with nitrogen gas in a PVD chamber, the metal emerges with a convincing gold or brass finish. Adding a little methane to the mix reddens the color, resulting in rose gold. A touch of acetylene darkens the finish to a bronze with an antique effect.

Despite being just microns thick, a PVD coating is extremely dense and, in consequence, very hard and durable. By some estimates, it is up to 20 times more scratch-resistant than electroplated chrome.

Powder Coating

is usually described as semi-durable, not as robust as electroplated or PVD finishes, somewhat more durable than the finish on your car, and requiring more care to maintain a like-new appearance.

It is essentially a dry paint in powder form applied using a special low-velocity spray gun that disperses the powder while giving it a positive electrical charge. The particles are drawn to the item to be finished which has been given a negative charge.

Once the powder is applied, the item being coated is baked in an oven, which melts and bonds the powder and changes the structure of the coating into long, cross-linked molecular chains.

These chains are what give the coating its durability, reducing the risk of scratches, chipping, abrasions, corrosion, fading, and other wear issues.

Some powder coats are given an overlay of a transparent coating to better protect the finish.

Karran Faucet Warranty

The current Karran fau­cet warranty is a giant step up from its one-year warranty of two years ago that allowed a buyer to purchase replacement parts at Kar­ran's cost as the only available remedy for a defective fau­cet.

Overall, the new lifetime-of-the-fau­cet warranty is well-drafted, lucid, and fairly easy for a non-lawyer to understand. It was probably not written by a lawyer, however, as evidenced by the multiple redundancies that are unlikely in a lawyer-drafted document. However, we attribute these to a layman's overabundance of caution.

It still has a few problems, however.

The first is that the warranty applies only to those fau­cets "manufactured and sold by Kar­ran USA." As Kar­ran does not manufacture its fau­cets, we wonder if any products exist to which the warranty actually applies.

In practice, however, the company honors warranty claims on the fau­cets it sells even though it does not manufacture them.

Its major problem is that the warranty still does not fully conform to the requirements of the Mag­nu­son-Moss War­ranty Act ( 15 U.S.C. §2308), the federal law that dictates the minimum content of and sets the rules for consumer product warranties in the United States.

State-Law Implied Warranties

One example is its attempt to deny the buyer the protection of state-law statutory warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose with this disclaimer (in all caps so it cannot be overlooked):

"THIS LIMITED WARRANTY IS IN LIEU OF ALL OTHER WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND MERCHANTABILITY."

It is not legal under Mag­nu­son-Moss for a company offering a written warranty to exclude coverage by state law implied warranties.

A company's written warranty is intended to supplement implied warranties, not replace them.

Any attempt to deny state-law implied warranty coverage is simply ignored.(15 U.S.C. §2308(a))

Deceptive Language

But, the second problem with the attempted disclaimer can be more serious.

The language could be considered deceptive and one of the three cardinal rules of Mag­nu­son-Moss is that a warranty must not be in the least bit deceptive.

This provision would almost certainly lead a reasonable person to believe that a defective fau­cet would be excluded from state-law warranty coverage — and that is the very definition of deception under the law.

We don't think for a minute that Kar­ran is being deliberately deceptive. No doubt whoever wrote the warranty saw the language in some other warranty and copied it, unaware that it is prohibited. (Many fau­cet warranties include similar language. We are not sure where it first appeared, but it has been widely copied.)

But, under Magnuson-Moss, deliberate deception is not required to incur liability. It is sufficient that the company has not taken reasonable care "to make the warranty not misleading." (15 U.S. Code § 2310(c)(2)) The very presence of the provision in the Kar­ran warranty, however, evidences a lack of the required care.

In any lawsuit, Kar­ran's liability could well include punitive or exemplary damages for deception that could far exceed any actual damages.

Sole and Absolute Discretion

Another legal misstep occurs in this language:

"The Company shall elect the remedy in its sole and absolute discretion."

Under Mag­nu­son-Moss, a company never has "sole and absolute discretion."

The Act provides in very clear language that a company that offers a written warranty (the "warrantor")

"…shall not indicate in any written warranty … either directly or indirectly that the decision of the warrantor is final or binding in any dispute concerning the warranty … Nor shall a warrantor state that it alone shall determine what is a defect under the agreement." (16 CFR § 700.8)

Such statements are also considered deceptive…

"… since section 110(d) of the Act, 15 U.S.C. 2310(d), gives state and federal courts jurisdiction over suits for breach of warranty and service contract." (16 CFR § 700.8)

Improper Captioning

By far, however, the overarching legal mistake in the drafting of the warranty is its defective designation in the document's caption.

To be a limited warranty, the document must be clearly designated as a limited warranty with the magic word "limited" in its "caption, or prominent title."

So long as the word "limited" is included, the caption gives "fair warning" to a potential buyer, right at the very top of the document, that coverage provided by the warranty is less than full coverage.

Unfortunately, the Kar­ran warranty is captioned just

Faucet Warranty

The magic word "limited" is nowhere to be found.

Although it is clear from the text of the warranty that Kar­ran intends to offer a limited warranty, the missing "limited" in its caption automatically converts the warranty to a Full Wa­ran­ty, disregarding Kar­ran's intentions. (15 U.S.C. §2303(a), 16 CFR §700.6(a))

This one simple drafting omission changes the entire nature of the Kar­ran warranty. A full warranty gives a buyer many more rights, voiding almost all of the restrictions and limitations written into the Kar­ran warranty.

Here are a few examples:

1. A fau­cet is in the class of products that "has utility only when installed," meaning that the company is responsible for the labor costs associated with uninstalling and reinstalling the fau­cet as well as the cost of its repair. (16 CFR § 700.9)

1. If Karran cannot repair the fau­cet after several attempts within a reasonable timeframe, the customer has the choice of receiving a complete refund (without "taking into account the age of the defeive product") or a replacement fau­cet. (15 U.S.C. §2304(a)(4))

2. The Kar­ran warranty tries to limit warranty coverage to the original buyer and prevent the transfer of the warranty to any subsequent owner of the fau­cet with this provision:

1. "No person or entity, other than the Original Purchaser, shall have any right to assert any claim under this Lim­it­ed Wa­ran­ty, or otherwise, in connection with the Products. This Lim­it­ed Wa­ran­ty is personal to the Original Purchaser and may not be transferred by the Original Purchaser to any other person or entity, by contract, operation of law, transfer of the property into which the Products are installed, or otherwise."

1. In a full warranty, however, a subsequent owner is given all of the protections of the warranty. The company cannot prevent the transfer of the warranty to subsequent owners. (15 U.S.C. § 2304(b)(4))

3. Even for a full warranty, the caption is incorrect.

1. A full warranty requires a statement of the duration of the warranty in its caption ( 16 CFR § 700.6). "Faucet Warranty" is not an adequate caption. It must be "Full Lifetime Warranty."

1. A limited warranty does not need a statement of duration in its caption. So "Faucet Limited Warranty" is a proper caption.

1. However, "[w]arrantors may include a statement of duration in a limited warranty designation." (16 CFR § 700.6)

1. It's a good idea to do so if only because a caption such as "Limited Lifetime Faucet Warranty" is good advertising.

How to Interpret a Faucet Warranty

Generally, the length of a fau­cet company's warranty is a very good indicator of how long a company's management thinks its products will last without breaking.

A company's marketing materials may gush about its use of "the highest quality, long-lasting components" and claim that its fau­cets "will provide years of trouble-free use," but its real opinion about the quality of its fau­cets is usually contained in its warranty.

Karran's lifetime-of-the-product warranty strongly suggests that the company has full confidence in the durability of its fau­cets and believes that its fau­cets will, in fact, "… provide years of trouble-free use." Having examined a random selection of the faucets, we have to agree.

Karran Customer Service

Karran's customer service is very good.

We did not use our usual battery of structured test questions to assess the service. With smaller companies like Kar­ran, agents quickly realize they are being tested and change their behavior. We did, however, contact customer service with a list of carefully chosen questions about Kar­ran fau­cets over a 90-day period.

(Actually, one particularly sharp agent did catch on to us before the testing was fully completed. We were able to only finish part of our testing, but we got enough to be certain of our conclusions.)

The overall service response was helpful, courteous, and patient. Our volunteer testers are the masters of the truly stupid question, but nothing seems to ruffle Kar­ran's agents, not even being calculatedly rude.

Product knowledge was good, but not excellent, and could use improvement.

We rate customer service "superior."

The Better Business Bureau agrees with our assessment. The company's rating is the BBB's highest, A+. The rating is based on zero complaints to the Bureau over the past three years.

Kar­ran is not a BBB-accredited business, however, and not pledged to follow the high ethical business standards required of all accredited businesses.

Karran Website

The Karran website is well-constructed with intuitive menu-based navigation. It is an adaptive site, meaning that it displays properly on all devices from a smartphone to a desktop monitor.

The site search feature is useful for finding fau­cets by model name or number, but otherwise, its results are hit-and-miss.

A search on "ADA" to find all fau­cets usable by persons with physical disabilities returned no results when we checked a year ago. It still doesn't.

The same is true of a search on "Water­Sense." We know that some fau­cets are identified as ADA-compliant and Water­Sense-listed, but none showed up in the searches.

We got a better result searching for fau­cet finishes. A search on "Gold" returned five pages of products with a gold finish – everything from sinks and fau­cets to lotion dispensers. We had the same results from a search on "Gunmetal."

A search by finish is very helpful when coordinating products for a bathroom or kitchen remodel.

Faucets are easy to find. Click on Kitchen or Bathroom at the main menu, then on the link to fau­cets in the drop-down menu.

Faucet listing pages are colorful and graphic. They definitely command the viewer's attention. But they were evidently designed by someone with twenty-year-old eyes.

Most fau­cet buyers are in their 30s and 40s, and for 30-something eyes, the light gray text on a white background used in parts of the listing is hard to read.

Our experience over the years has shown that the most effective listings consist of a single page that contains summaries of the features and specifications along with an image and links to more detailed information, eliminating the need for multiple page scrolls.

A Karran fau­cet listing generally follows this format. An image, finish options, and a summary of the fau­cet's features are followed by conspicuous links to…

• Gallery: a collection of fau­cet images that may include a dimensioned drawing.

• Features & Benefits: A summary of the fau­cet's specifications.

• Details:: Repeats the fau­cet's specifications and adds more detail under the heading "Features & Benefits." Why the detail is not in the first "Features and Benefits" is a puzzle.

• Where to Buy: Links to a display of retail sources.

• Reviews: Links to customer reviews.

The link that is missing is a link to the fau­cet's warranty.

Mag­nu­son-Moss requires the disclosure of the terms and conditions of a written warranty "prior to" the sale of a consumer product and allows internet sellers to provide the full text of a warranty online with a "conspicuous link" from each product listing to the text of the applicable warranty.

The listings include some features we like a lot. The best is the dynamic fau­cet image. When a user selects a finish from the finish table, the image morphs to show the fau­cet in the new finish – excellent for product visualization.

Actual hard information provided about a fau­cet, However, is woefully incomplete.

We identify 30 or so fau­cet specifications that are important to a fully-informed buying decision. Everything from how the fau­cet is presented in images to the number of mounting holes needed.

The number varies slightly from company to company and from fau­cet to fau­cet.

Not every fau­cet listing requires every specification. For example, Water­Sense^® listings apply only to lavatory fau­cets. So, a kitchen fau­cet listing does not need Water­Sense^® information. Similarly, the material used in a spray head and spray hose information generally applies to sprays usually found only on kitchen fau­cets. Bathroom fau­cets seldom include sprays.

Some specifications, however, apply to all fau­cets. Secondary materials, country of origin, and finish type are examples.

Some information is required by law. A link to the full text of the warranty that applies to a fau­cet is required by the pre-sale availability rule of the Mag­nu­son-Moss Wa­ran­ty Act. (16 CFR § 702)

Karran's site provides some basic information, fau­cet dimensions, available finishes, primary materials, and certifications, for example, but a lot of basic specifications necessary for a fully informed buying decision are missing.

"Solid brass" fau­cets, for example, are rarely solid brass. They often include zinc alloys and plastics, something that should be noted as secondary materials.

Karran already has all of the necessary information. It just needs to be willing to share, and share honestly.

Testing & Certifications

CalGreen^® Certified: Some Karran fau­cets comply with the energy-saving requirements of the California Green Building Standards Code. For a fau­cet to display the CalGreen label, it must have been tested for compliance with CALGreen Chapter 4, Residential Mandatory Measures, Section 4.303 Indoor Water Use, and certified by an independent testing organization.

Comparable Faucets

Faucets made in Asia comparable to Kar­ran in quality with a better warranty, but not necessarily comparable for design or price, include

Conclusions

Karran is still new to the fau­cet business but is doing very well, having improved dramatically since our last report a year ago. It has the potential to become a first-rate fau­cet seller.

Its dedication to the quality of its sinks has spilled over to its selection of high-quality fau­cets. A strong warranty and exceptional customer service back its products. Its prices are fair and more than competitive.

It still has a few problems with its warranty and needs to improve the fau­cet specifications on its website to give a prospective buyer enough information to make a fully informed buying decision. It especially needs to ensure that its specifications are accurate. We found many misstatements. And, finally, it should stop pretenting to be a fau­cet manufacturer – not that anyone actually believes it. It is perfectly adequate these days to be an importer of carefully chosen, good quality fau­cets.

Most members of our rating panel concluded that they would buy a Kar­ran fau­cet "without reservation" noting the good quality of the fau­cets, reputable ISO-9001-qualified manufacturers, reasonable prices, a stromg lifetime warramty. and responsive post-sale support.

Continuing Research

We are continuing to research the company. If you have experience with Kar­ran fau­cets, good, bad, or indifferent, we would like to hear about it, so please post a comment below or email us. If you have a question, email us at starcraftreviews@yahoo.com. We will answer within one business day.

1. Normal household water pressure in North Amer­i­ca is between 40 and 60 psi, so this test is conducted on the high side of household pressure.