Sale of goods act when paid for by gift voucher.

lukehb

Hi,

I have a MacBook Pro which has failed outside of warranty.

I have an report from an independent IT repair professional which states that the issue was inherent at the time of manufacture.

I am hoping to make a claim for this under the Sale of Goods Act, but the item was paid for by Gift Voucher, not with cash or credit/debit card. The gift voucher was provided by an insurance company from a previous broken computer claimed for on my home insurance. I did not pay for the gift voucher either, other than my excess, (£150 I believe). The item was purchased from PC World in July 2010

How does the SoG act apply in this case, or does it even apply at all?

As an aside. The particular component that failed (the logic board) was actually repaired by Apple under warranty in May 2011.

The item was repaired by Apple, and paid for, according to their receipt, as a "Warranty repair". There was no excess or other fees to be paid by me.

Does this affect the claim in any way, or could it also be argued that Apple also have a responsibility for the failure under SoG as they sold me a logic board repair (even though I didn't actually pay for it out of pocket).

Any advice would be much appreciated, as both PC World and Apple are refusing to accept any responsibility for it, and I am not well versed enough in consumer protection law to disagree with them and force the issue through Small Claims court if necessary.

Fosterdog

Regardless of how you paid you have the right to a remedy, if the chosen remedy is a refund then you are most likely to get it as a gift voucher as that is how you paid originally.

If you call pcworld repairs/customer service tell them you are claiming an out of warranty repair under SoGA and that you already have an independent engineers report stating manufacturing defect as the reason for the fault.

They should then either just carry out the repair, exchange, refund (can be partial), or they can inspect it and if they disagree with the report you have they can refuse, at this point you would send a letter before action and take them to small claims court where a judge will decide which report they agree with.

ETA: I wouldn't bother just taking it into store without speaking to customer services first as they can't take in non-chargeable out of warranty repairs without a reference number from higher up. I don't know if they do it with laptops but there have been people on here who have been asked to pay up front for TV inspections but this also gets refunded if they find in your favour, or gets added on to the total claim if it goes to court.