Faulty Electrical Goods What are My Rights? Recession = Poor Customer Service?

keicar

Hopefully someone may be able to help me, I bought an 8" 12 volt LCD TV from Maplins in preparation for a camping trip three weeks later costing £99. On the first night of using it, firstly the sound went then shortly afterwards the picture went along with the smell of burning components. My OH wanted it to keep up with her fav programmes (sad I know!) and demanded we get another one, unfortuantely the Nearest Maplins was a 50 mile round trip, resulting in a replacement from a local electrical shop.

On return I took it to Maplins demanding a refund, they said they couldn't until it had been looked at by an engineer which would take 10 days, here I am two weeks on and still it has not been looked at with no refund.

My question being if they decide I have done something wrong would they decline the refund? (I hasten to add under no circumstances did it get wet and it was only connected to the supplied 12v adaptor) Can I demand a refund? what are my rights? have found the staff rather unhelpful and abrupt.

Which got me thinking is the recession taking us back to the dark days of poor customer service where companies are trying to cut costs on refunds / replacements? Recently in my experience faulty goods were replaced no questions asked, or is it just Maplins?

Thanks in advance......

AirCooledHeaven

Maybe this will help?
http://www.berr.gov.uk/whatwedo/consumers/fact-sheets/page38311.html

esuhl

I believe that since the fault was discovered so soon after purchase, legally, it would be assumed to have been inherent at the time of purchase. Therefore you should be entitled to a full refund (or a replacement if you so choose).

The Sale of Goods Act covers these kind of issues. You should be able to find the full details via the search engine below. Start quoting "paragraph x, sub-section y of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 (as amended)" and watch the shop staff panic!

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=sale+of+goods+act

fwor

I suspect that the reason for the delay is because there is a specific problem with many 12 volt LCD TVs.

The problem is that some people assume that because they require a 12 volt supply, you can connect them directly to a car battery. Unfortunately car batteries can often have a voltage significantly higher than this, and it can burn out components internally.

So it's possible that Maplin are having returned faulty units tested to see whether excessive supply voltage caused the failure. If so, and the supplied power adaptor is supplying the correct voltage, they can deduce that the failure was (probably) caused by the customer, and not by an inherent fault.