I was about to ask actually: how does the extended warranty that credit card issuers give you work? It's one of the few good things mentioned in the small print! Are you automatically covered when you buy an item within the qualifying price range and quality (ie. new, no known defects)?
Seb
Bitstring , from the wonderful person Roland Watson said
Well, learn how to fix it .. unless they have changed the plastic they use, which was the main problem. Fascia kept breaking, buttons and button hinges broke, etc. etc. and likewise. Ditto the detergent drawer slide. And the drain hose, but that was down to the cat chewing it. Luckily the whole damn dishwasher is built like Lego, once you know the trick to removing the top (it has to be built like Lego, because the average dishwasher repairman is not Einstein).
No, what is FOC?
Roland.
Bitstring , from the wonderful person Roland Watson said
Free of Charge. (see, I Knew top-posting rotted your brain). SOGA = Sale of Goods Act, before you ask.
You are unlucky (obviously, either that or you wash a lot!)
But in either case you could have got a free warranty via barclaycard, a much cheaper warranty independently, and IMHO got it replaced for free anyway, less than 2 years is an unreasonable amount of time for a device like this to last.
IIRC for the barclaycard one you have to ring them up and register it.
"Roland Watson" wrote
Free of Charge!
The point is, under SOGA consumers can expect items purchased to be reasonably DURABLE. This can be taken to mean "working for up to SIX years" - depending on the item and amount paid. However, people normally expect a dishwasher to last much longer than "under two years", so SOGA can apply here. The retailer may try to wriggle out of it, but be pushy - they could lose in court!
A little snippet from Which? magasine's website :-
---------------
"You have legal rights
"If a product is faulty, you may have a claim against the retailer. Under the Sale of Goods Act, you're usually entitled to a full refund within the first few weeks. After this, you're entitled to compensation, usually the cost of repair, for a 'reasonable' amount of time.
"Exactly how much time is 'reasonable' varies. For example, you would expect an expensive TV to last a lot longer than a 10 kettle. In some cases, you could be entitled to claim compensation as much as six years after you bought the item."
---------------
Hope this helps!
"Ronald Raygun" wrote
And risk being taken to court, and losing?
"Tumbleweed" wrote
Exactly!
And Insurance Premium Tax.
Yes, but not straight away. That comes later. Unfortunately, preying on the consumer's ignorance of his rights is an extremely effective first line of defence, and before they can be taken to court the plaintiff would have to give them a final "or-else" notice.
Even then it's never clear-cut. As you say, ultimately they'd be at risk of losing. Think of that as being *only* at risk, as opposed to losing being certain. Often going through the motions of mounting a robust defence, even when their real chances of winning are slight, is enough to make an a have-a-go plaintiff cave in and give up. Regrettably, it boils down to a cost/benefit assessment.
According to Working Lunch the other day, this has now been withdrawn.
"Ronald Raygun" wrote
I'd have thought that someone quoting the SOGA would be showing that they were *not* ignorant - or are the retailers really that stupid not to notice that?!
"Ronald Raygun" wrote
Of course, court cases can also lead to payment of the other side's costs (when you lose) - so if it is quite likely that the retailer would lose, and the consumer looks determined to take it all the way, I'd say that the retailer is daft to take it that far - especially on a "cost/benefit assessment"!
Nah. Lots of people have heard of SOGA. Not many have read it. If the retailers guess that the customer is bluffing, they'd be right more often than wrong. And if the customer *had* read the relevant bits of SOGA, he'd know that it's not always as simple as getting a FOC replacement.
A dispute over an item of domestic equipment is likely to be dealt with in the Small Claims track, where there is usually no award of costs, apart from the small filing fee. Admittedly this "small" fee can be a sizeable proportion of the cost of the goods involved, when it itself is on the small side. Must be about £50 these days, which is no trivial part of a £220 dishwasher.
The retailers also have the option (having hoped the customer was bluffing when threatening to take them to court) of not defending the action if it does go ahead, and of paying up at the last minute (though by then it'll be too late to take the filing fee hit, I guess).
"Ronald Raygun" wrote
"If [RR] *had* read the relevant bits of" the earlier post :-
... then he'd see that a repair is not possible. Assuming a reasonable second-hand or reconditioned unit could be obtained, a FOC replacement with that unit would be the usual solution - would it not?
Not for a two year old item no. The value appropriate for the use of the item in the years of ownership can be deducted from the offer.
tim
"tim" wrote
... only if the consumer is compensated with a *monetary* offer. It would be perfectly proper instead to provide another 2-year-old equivalent, if that were available.
It's usually easier to find a new unit than an equivalent one of similar age, but what I actually had in mind was that they might take the position that no remedy would be appropriate at all, by alleging that some form of misuse had taken place, which would have adversely affected the item's durability.
"Ronald Raygun" wrote
Presumably the engineer's report would contradict that (hopefully) ?
What report? I don't think the fee would be a recoverable expense.
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