John Lewis appliances

deaglecat

Hi, I am looking for some advice about my consumer rights.

Some background, we bought a John Lewis Gas Hob (model JLBIGH753) when we had a John Lewis fitted kitchen installed about 20 months ago.

In the interim, the hob has failed three times with the same problem. This has resulted in periods in which we have had to either not use the hob or having to manually light it. Parts availability has been problematic and often it has resulted in multiple visits from their service agents. We cannot use the hood extractor whilst it is broken (because it is on the same electrical circuit as the faulty appliance).

Understandably, we are not very happy and have asked John Lewis for a refund on the hob. Especially since we paid them a fair whack for the kitchen.

They have replied to say that they need to contact the manufacturer ... which I had perhaps naively assumed was in fact John Lewis ! ... to see what the options are.

Where do I stand ?

If I allow another repair, to the same fault then I am concerned that it will fail again ... but next time out of warranty. Can I insist on a replacement / refund ? Where does it go if they won't oblige ?

Thanks

Deag

deaglecat

Well John Lewis are now describing it as Zanussi hob - even though it was bought from them and has a John Lewis branding.

I don't doubt that Zanussi are are the OEM for John Lewis, but I must say that I expected that they would stand behind a product that bears their name... even if it has proven to be quite unreliable.

Disappointed. They are usually better than this at Customer service.

deaglecat

It gets worse, they are now asking us to deal with their OEM (Electrolux / Zanussi ) directly.

Nice one John Lewis... sell the product with your brand and then step away once things start to go wrong.

I have had such good experience with JLP in the past !

vyle

So, have you contacted Zanussi to see what can be done on that side of things? After all, regardless of what happens, JL will need to get an approved Zanussi engineer out to have a look at it before they commit to refund or a replacement, might as well expediate things, although it might be worth shooting off an email to the Managing Director anyway.

He won't read it, mind you, but it'll get passed to someone in customer services. That's how I got my dishwasher replaced. JL didn't do anything wrong in my case, but Hotpoint were going to take just over a month to come out and even look at it, and I wasn't happy with that. AFAIK JL gas a 3 repair tolerance anyway, so if you've had it done 3 times, you're entitled to a replacement. Email the MD, make it clear how many replacements youve had and that you've lost confidence in the product and something should be sorted out.

I don't see the problem about it changing name though. Obviously JL has to pay companies to make stuff with the JL badge, and if it's not turning out to be profitable, they might as well just stick to the vanilla model. And let me ask you something:

If JL knew of faults, but kept their name on it because of standing by it, then would you not be cross that they're knowingly putting their name to sub par products?

However, I doubt it's because of that, it's most likely because it didn't generate enough profit.

If

deaglecat

Vyle - thanks for the insight.

We'll get back in touch with John Lewis... I just don't want to get into another series of engineer appointments, time off ... and when the service company turn up they never seem to have the parts - so it is usually a double booking to get this fixed.

At the end of the day we bought it from John Lewis, had it fitted by John Lewis and it bears the John Lewis branding ... so I want them to deal with my issue.

vyle

deaglecat wrote: »

Vyle - thanks for the insight.

We'll get back in touch with John Lewis... I just don't want to get into another series of engineer appointments, time off ... and when the service company turn up they never seem to have the parts - so it is usually a double booking to get this fixed.

At the end of the day we bought it from John Lewis, had it fitted by John Lewis and it bears the John Lewis branding ... so I want them to deal with my issue.

Certainly let them know about the two bookings, too. The hotpoint engineer for my first dishwasher asked what the fault was, told me what part he'd need, came out and then asked what my fault was, looked up the part and said it'd take 4 to 6 weeks to get the part. JL was pretty !!!!ed off about that too, because it doesn't reflect well on them.

Don't rant or anything, but clearly lay out your issues with the situation, and say what you would like them to do to resolve it.