Indesit Dishwasher - Depreciating Credit Offer

BrummyBen

Hi All,

I purchased an Indesit IDL40 slimline dishwasher on 5th November 2009 from Currys Online. This machine has now stopped working. Although it is outside of the 12 month guarantee period, I would expect a machine costing £229.99 to last longer than 16 months before breaking down. Under the Sale of Goods Act 1979 it is not fit for purpose and has not lasted a reasonable length of time. I would therefore expect a free replacement or repair. I have contacted Currys and had the following response:

Thanks for getting in touch with me and bring this to my attention.
I was concerned to learn of the problems you have had with your Indesit IDL40 Slimline Dishwasher. I would like to offer yourself a goodwill gesture of £110.00 towards a new Dishwasher. Would it be possible if your could provide me a contact number so I can give yourself a call to discus this further.

So I replied with:

Whilst I appreciate your goodwill gesture, as I'm sure you are well aware, the cheapest Slimline Dishwasher available on your website is £189.99 which is a lesser model than the one which has broken down. This would leave us significantly out of pocket & with an inferior product. I would therefore expect either a full replacement of the model which has broken down, or an offer which would allow the replacement of the unit with a comparable model.

Which they replied with:

I was concerned to learn of the problems you have had with your Indesit IDL40 Slimline Dishwasher. I would like to confirm the £110.00 that I have offered is Depreciated Credit. This is calculated by the price you paid for the item and the length of time you have had the item. I have put this information into our system and it as worked out £110.00.

I replied saying I wasnt happy as this wouldnt cover the cost of a replacemrent machine & got the following response:

It is true that appliances such as your dishwasher should be fir for purpose for up to 6 years. However, outside the manufacturers warranty, we can only offer you depreciating credit calculated on the age and initial cost of the product. As you have has 17 months use of the appliance, 5 of those outside the manufacturers warranty, the value depreciates accordingly.

You have been offered £110.00 as depreciating credit, this can be put towards a repair or a new appliance. We are unable to offer you a full refund or an exchange at this time. I can increase the depreciating credit offer to £125.00, however that is a final offer. Please contact us again to confirm whether you accept the offer.

So, shall I except this 'final offer' and except its going to cost me to replace it (or hope a repair comes in at less than this) or shall i pursue it further?

vuvuzela

Look at it that if you wanted to pursue them, you would have the hassle of getting an engineer's report and the associated day off work for that or that you've had a £105 dishwasher that lasted a year and a half...
Oh, and it's accept, not except

visidigi

I think £125 is a fair offer given its out of warranty - Maybe do this a bit clever, ask them for the credit as gift vouchers to spend in store?

Then with the vouchers use them to pay for a price matched item against another retailer? Gift vouchers would give you this flexiblity, and would reduce your outlay, I just don't know if they would want the old machine back (likely to be returned to manufacturer...)

vuvuzela

visidigi wrote: »

I think £125 is a fair offer given its out of warranty - Maybe do this a bit clever, ask them for the credit as gift vouchers to spend in store?

Then with the vouchers use them to pay for a price matched item against another retailer? Gift vouchers would give you this flexiblity, and would reduce your outlay, I just don't know if they would want the old machine back (likely to be returned to manufacturer...)

Sounds like they would be offering cash. Also it looks like they are writing off the machine as the offer says it could be used for repair.

Freddie_Snowbits

Oh, from my knowledge, do not buy another indesit.

dan_l

We went through a similar thing with Currys and a broken laptop out of warranty, they gave us it in a credit note so I expect you would get the same. They didn't ask for the old laptop back in this case.

Just accept the offer, it's not a great offer because on their calculation it works out that they are knocking off over the half the items value for 17 months use and I would hope for a dishwasher to last more than 3 years but if you don't accept then what? Engineers report and then threaten them with court? It's not worth it because even then you still wouldn't get the full amount you paid so the hassle/wait would only be for a few quid extra.

visidigi

vuvuzela wrote: »

Sounds like they would be offering cash. Also it looks like they are writing off the machine as the offer says it could be used for repair.

I HIGHLY doubt they would offer cash - the whole purpose is to maintain business - giving cash lets you go elsewhere...

BrummyBen

Just had the following reply in repsonse to how the credit would be paid:

Dear Mr Homer,

I have passed the case to our Finance team and they will contact you within 2 working days to take the details of the account that you want the £125.00 BACS payment transferring into. They will then transfer the payment into that account.

I apologise again for the problem you have experienced with your appliance and I thank you for taking the time to contact us.

Kind regards

The KNOWHOW™ team

So it is lovely hard cash! Think I'll accept the offer, purchase another appliance (not Indesit!) and hope it lasts longer!

dan_l

BrummyBen wrote: »

Just had the following reply in repsonse to how the credit would be paid:

Dear Mr Homer,

I have passed the case to our Finance team and they will contact you within 2 working days to take the details of the account that you want the £125.00 BACS payment transferring into. They will then transfer the payment into that account.

I apologise again for the problem you have experienced with your appliance and I thank you for taking the time to contact us.

Kind regards

The KNOWHOW™ team

So it is lovely hard cash! Think I'll accept the offer, purchase another appliance (not Indesit!) and hope it lasts longer!

Cool they must have changed things since the start of the year.

I had heard that this rebranding of The TechGuys to The KnowHow Team was going to improve the aftercare so maybe this is one of the things they have changed.

visidigi

that has to be the most idiotic thing I have ever seen a company do - I mean even the insurance companies pay vouchers.

Glad to see you have cash though - if you're looking for somewhere with quick and efficient delivery try boots appliances...

CoolHotCold

Yes, the entire aftercare and delivery/installation /repair centre etc etc.
Everything is now done in house, from repairs (except Acer /some packard bells (same company)) to delivery to installation (some outsourcing for certain services due to specialist skills needed) to the added value services (again some outsourcing for certain services) and the call center was brought back in house (as funnily enough outsourcing meant the call center was paid on calls taken, so expect to be asked to call back later or random disconnections instead of fixing whatever issue you were having).

Every TechGuy member (regardless of if they were in delivery or call handeling or in store) all went through the same base training (with additional training given to experts or team leaders) which moved the focus away from technical to customer care.

The job isn't finished and KnowHow/Dixons Retail still have a lot to do in sorting out the myriad of diffrent systems they use, but starting with the bit that matters most (the customer care/facing) is a decent step.

There will be gaps or issues in every transformation so I'll wait and see how they do.

Anyway it doesn't help in this case but information is nice to have. £125 for a 18 month old system is reasonable, you could go down the route of getting a report done and the hassle of time off and hope they concluded the fault was inheritly (the machine not lasting a long time has no affect on if its under SoGA, it must be inherently faulty) and getting vouchers/replacement/repair/again a partial refund from Dixons Retail. The fact you emailed them explaining your displeasure and them offering money straight away is a good deal. Plus they have a dishwasher for £170 which seems better on their dixons website (I'm not sure as im not a dishwasher expert). Now would you say you were happy with paying £45 for "renting" a dishwasher for 18 months? I probably would be.


In my view, pretty good service going above the SoGA and offering it cash too. (But then again I might be Bias'd)

Also to visidigi, Offering Cash In Hand when wanted will bring back more customers than it looses, Yes a few will go elsewhere, but most will probably put the money back into Dixons Retail either through the website or in store knowing if it goes wrong outside of warranty they have a decent customer service to fall back on (Based on this case)