Can Using Replacement Charger Void Warranty?

rrobbo

I have an LG Viewty Smile and for the last few months I've been chasing LG to fix it. They're basically arguing that the warranty is void because I used a replacement charger that wasn't manufactured by LG. Are they within their rights to do this? The phone was round 6 months old when it stopped working.

The longer version :

Phone started playing up after a few months and stopped taking a charge. LG support desk asked me to try an alternate charger to narrow down where the problem was coming from, so I got one from Amazon. When this didn't help they asked me to send in the phone and charger. When I did this they sent them back saying that the phone was damaged beyond economical repair because I'd used a non-LG charger (the covering letter actually stated that the problem was due to liquid damage but they later accepted that this was a mistake).

I then rang in to get more details and eventually they came back saying that the phone had been 'fried' because the charger had too high a voltage. I passed this on to the manufacturer of the charger and they said that there was no problem on their side and they'd sold loads without issue.

I went back to LG and they agreed to pass it to head office for further review. Because I kept pressing them they finally agreed to send it back to their warranty people (an external company called Regenersis) for a second assessment. I've now had a call from Regenersis saying that there's nothing wrong with the phone. Apparently they automatically mark the phone as being beyond economical repair if it has been used with a third party charger - they don't even assess the phone. They now claim that the charger is actually of too low a voltage to even charge the phone, let alone damage it. Their advice is that I go to LG and buy an official LG charger. In the mean time I've managed to use the original charger on a second phone and it works OK, so the problem definitely is with the phone.

I've now had a further e-mail from LG that ultimately just re-iterates their previous stance, so I'm not sure why they even bothered to review the phone again. The main comment is :

"We have spoken to our repair centre and our technical team, and can confirm as a non LG charger has been used on your handset, this has voided your manufacturers guarantee."

The phone isn't really worth the hassle of following up but, as a matter of principle, I'd like to know where LG stand legally on this.

JJ_Egan

We have spoken to our repair centre and our technical team, and can confirm as a non LG charger has been used on your handset, this has voided your manufacturers guarantee."

One presumes that they are correctly reading their rules .
Usually the manufactures warranty states at their discretion and they usually mention use of third party equipment may invalidate any claim .

Seller of the phone may have had a different warranty result if it was within their guarantee period .

jje

rrobbo

I have asked LG to show me the exact warranty clause that they're quoting but I haven't received anything yet. The nearest that I could find on the web was a disclaimer that stated that the warranty would be void if the phone was damaged by a third party charger. In this case the phone was broken before the charger was used and they have now stated that the charger can't even charge the phone let alaone damage it.

My bigger query is if a manufacturer can impose such conditions on a consumer. How far can this be taken? What if you use a replacement remote control on the TV or even change the batteries in the remote? Given the number of people who have spare chargers at the office or in the UK, have they all voided their warranties?

grumbler

rrobbo wrote: »

My bigger query is if a manufacturer can impose such conditions on a consumer.

Looks very reasonable to me. Let's say you use some cheap charger that sends mains voltage to the handset as a result of some fault. Is the handset supposed to withstand 240V? Of course not. Does the manufacturer has any obligations to repair the phone broken as a result of the above? ...

rrobbo

I can see that it would be reasonable to void a warranty if a third party charger did cause a problem but it seems unreasonable to void a warranty for using a third party product which, by their own admission, couldn't cause a problem to the phone.

Equally, if a supplier is advertising a charger as being suitable for a specific phone then what obligation do they have to ensure that their charger doesn't damage the phone for which it is intended?

My other concern is that the LG support desk is suggesting using an alternate charger to test the phone and not qualifying that the charger has to be LG manufactured. To be honest I wish I'd simply tried to send it back at that stage and say that it's their job to identify the source of the problem, not mine.

JJ_Egan

My bigger query is if a manufacturer can impose such conditions on a consumer. How far can this be taken?

The manufactures warranty is an extra its not the warranty that comes with the phone from the seller by law . It is usually of a more limited nature and subject to conditions .

If they state x then its up to you to prove them wrong .

Equally, if a supplier is advertising a charger as being suitable for a specific phone then what obligation do they have to ensure that their charger doesn't damage the phone for which it is intended?

Sale of Goods Act etc but again you have to prove that the product has caused damage .

jje

rrobbo

Thanks for that, I think that I need to be a bit more on the ball with understanding who's responsible for what in terms of guarantees. When the phone originally broke down it was just under 6 months after I'd got it on a package from Vodafone. They immediately told me to contact LG, which I thought sounded right but now realise that I should have pressed Vodafone further. Vodafone had originally just sent me shipping details with the phone and not a specific receipt and LG wouldn't accept them as proof of purchase, so I had to get a receipt from Vodafone which, for a number of reasons, took ages and pushed me beyond the six month period (which I now believe puts me in no man's land).

Now I'm just going to forget about the phone, as I don't believe that it's worth the effort and it sounds as though there are too many loopholes if a manufacturer is simply going to refuse to fix a problem.

The final chapter of this saga is that LG have now come back and said that they are invalidating the warranty for this specific claim but I can claim for any other problem : "Unfortunately, as the charger used was not an LG approved charger this would void the warranty for this fault in particular. However, if the handset was to go faulty in the future under the manufacturer’s warranty, and providing this be a manufacturing defect we would honour the warranty."

In the meantime the repair centre are now saying both there's nothing wrong with the phone and that the charger doesn't generate any power to have caused a problem if there was one. There just seems to be absolutely no logic or consistency behind much that they say, so I'll just forget about it before I pull my hair out.

One final point to watch out for is that when the phone was initially returned it was marked as being "beyond economic repair" and when I pressed them they said that the phone had been "fried". This is very misleading and, if they are now right in saying that the phone is working fine, could have led me to throw away a perfectly good phone. Just something for people to bear in mind if they see that phrase "beyond economic repair" - it may not mean exactly what you might expect.