What's the catch?

The A/C isn't the system in my house that's been acting suspicious lately. Two years ago I had to replace my water heater, which leaked water all over my utility closet (not to mention that it stopped heating the water, too). The replacement had something I'd never seen before: an electronic control box on top of the tank. All the previous water heaters of my acquaintance had nothing but a couple of inaccessible thermostats and a reset button inconveniently buried inside the tank insulation.

But this water heater is different. It's a smart water heater. Or so they would have you believe. The "Energy Smart" control system not only actually lets you set the temperature or reset it from outside the insulation (amazing enough in itself), it also lets you select a smart mode in which it supposedly pays attention to how much hot water is being used and bases its heatng pattern on that, or a vacation mode; and it has a self-diagnosis doohickey from which you can supposedly determine what's wrong by the number of times the light flashes (e.g., top element is dead, bottom element is dead, no water in the tank, etc.).

All well and good, except a while ago the light began to flash on and off slowly, with a loud click each time, and not in a discernable "number of flashes" pattern. This would go on for anywhere from 30 seconds to 15 minutes at a time, and then it would be OK for a while, maybe even days at a time. Resetting the controller sometimes seemed to help, and other times... not so much.

It's finally gotten to the point where it spends the majority of its time doing this. Mind you, it is still heating the water (knock on wood). But the clicking is driving me crazy, and the information I dug up on the manufacturer's website indicated that the control board probably needed to be replaced. So today I finally called the manufacturer and told the customer service rep what it was doing. I was expecting a lot of hassle and rigamarole to do a warranty claim, get it installed, etc. Here's what ensued:

He asked for my name and address and the serial number of the water heater, and how many times it was flashing. He then said it needed a new controller which was covered under the warranty, and if I'd give him a credit card to charge a $5 shipping fee he'd send it right out. It would come with instructions that anyone who was moderately handy could use to install it, and if there were any installation questions I just needed to call them and they'd go through the procedure.

That was it. No third degree, no proof of purchase -- or of malfunction -- required, no "you'll have to have that installed by a licensed plumber/electrician/nuclear physicist or it voids the warranty", no hoops to jump through.

It all seems too simple. What's the catch?