Faulty washing machine

Lee_cheshire

Hi.
My elderly father bought a washing machine from his local Currys store.
It developed a fault & they directed us to the manufacturers helpline. Suffice to say this has been a 5 week pain.

As I understand the Sale of Goods Act, if he had purchased something which we could have physically returned, we could have refused to deal with the manufacturers ourselves & instructed the store to do so.

Does the same principal apply to white goods? Could we have insisted that they make all the phone calls to the manufacturer & arranged the engineer visit themselves?

InsideInsurance

For anything at all your Sales of Goods rights sit with the retailer and not the manufacturer.

That said, it may be quicker to deal with the manufacturer than the retailer

Lee_cheshire

I'd rather the assistant in the store go through the endless list of pre-recorded numbered options, and deal with the language issues.
Also, if I was a manufacturer, and a representative of one of my major corporate customers was on the phone, I might be more responsive than I would be with Joe public.

InsideInsurance

Lee_cheshire wrote: »

Also, if I was a manufacturer, and a representative of one of my major corporate customers was on the phone, I might be more responsive than I would be with Joe public.

You're making a lot of assumptions, generally store assistant calling a call centre agent doesnt get a significantly greater amount of power behind the process.

Secondly, with corporate accounts the retailer may well not have any rights with the manufacturer as they sign away them in exchange for lower unit costs (they dont have statutory rights).

A former employer used to sell white goods, amoungst other things, and all was on a non-return basis. They had a third party repair company so any TV, wash machine etc that broke they'd send that company out not the manufacturers guys and if it was unrepairable then they just swallowed the loss themselves (or sold it in the staff shop)

Esqui

It might be worth seeing if the shop can escalate to try and get the manufacturer to agree to an exchange, if it's been going on that long

Lee_cheshire

Thanks for replies.
I'm making no assumptions. The use of the word "might" should indicate I'm suggesting it might be so rather than assuming it definitely is.
I guess the only point I'm making is that I should have insisted the retailer dealt with it.

unholyangel

I mightve missed it but OP, have you told us when the washing machine was purchased?

Lee_cheshire

Sorry unholy. -How remiss of me.
It was bought in Feb, so still within the 6 months.

They're due to repair on Wednesday, so hopefully that'll be the end of it.