Sofa Frame Failure within 6 months

Tyler119

End of August took delivery of a corner sofa, £3400, modular Max Divani.

Late last month I sit down on the recliner section (not reclined out) and hear a noise and feel my bottom go down into the sofa. reclined the seat out, and you can see the inside has collapsed in the middle.

Retailer sends out an upholsterer, who confirms that the frame has failed.

Manufacturer, rather than retailer, appoints a third party company to carry out the repair. I am also told the repair will only be guaranteed for 1 YEAR.

Manufacturers frame guarantee is for 10 years, so obviously I am not happy that the repair is only guaranteed for 1 year as I am then worse off than when I took delivery of the sofa.

My question is, do I have to accept this repair or can I ask for a replacement? I do feel that the frame failing is quite a serious defect in the first few months and may render that section of the sofa unfit for the intended purpose.

Anyway just looking for advice on where I stand from a legal / consumer rights point of view?

macman

You are out of time to reject the whole sofa (30 days). The supplier can repair, replace or refund at their discretion.

Tyler119

macman wrote: »

You are out of time to reject the whole sofa (30 days). The supplier can repair, replace or refund at their discretion.

Thanks for the reply, however I think you have misunderstood my post entirely.

My issue is not with them carrying out a repair, this I would prefer as it took 14 weeks for the sofa to be made and delivered.

My issue is that they are saying the repair is only guaranteed for a year, when the frame from purchase is guaranteed for 10 years. I can understand this third party issuing the manufacturer a 1 year guarantee as they have created a goods of service contract between them.

However my consumer contract is with the retailer / manufacturer and the 10 year frame guarantee from purchase date should still stand. If it does not then the actions they intend to take would make me worse off as a consumer, than at the start of the contract between us. I believe this is legally unacceptable.

I have emailed a lady at the customer service department and made my position quite clear. I want written confirmation that the manufacturer will honour the 10 year frame guarantee from the purchase date, irrespective of this repair that they are having to have carried out, due to a manufacturing error.

Tyler119

Well small but awful update on the sofa situation.

The retailer is now trying to claim that structure of the sofa is only covered for 2 years.......

I have reminded them that the salesperson on the day stated that the structure was covered for 10 years. Having already shopped around this sounded right, as the companies we looked at, DFS, Harveys, Sofology, all came with at least 10 years warranty on the structure. This also makes sense as 10 years is the reasonable expection for the structure to last, in terms of fit for purpose.

I've asked them if they have made a mistake? I've also reminded them again that since delivery, no manufacturer warranty certificate has been sent to us. I mean no details on how best to care for the leather even.

Without discount on the day the sofa should have cost over £4500. I've told the retailer that the fact that the most expensive section of the sofa's frame has failed doesn't fill me with confidence. If this 2 year warranty is real for the frame, then clearly the manufacturer does not expect the frame to last very long. I've made it clear that it could be argued that the sofa is not fit for purpose and in fact we have been potentially miss sold a product.

They actually wrote that they had to call the manufacturer to ask about how long the warranty is. I mean they sold us a sofa (14 weeks to arrive) and they did not know important information and so they made it up on the day.

I have told them I am really hoping they have made a mistake on the structure warranty. I told them that we were told the covering on the sofa was guaranteed for 2 years and so we purchased a separate policy to bring that up to 5 years.

On top of this, they have not even one apologised for the frame failing. We purchased 4 kitchen table chairs from them (£652) and 3 of them have failed too. 2 failed first time around and now a replacement has failed. I am now getting a refund on them as we fear it will continue to happen.

I've not thrown consumer acts or anything like that at them yet. I am hoping that this will all be resolved easily and that some mistake has been made.

I understand that no one really replied to my original post. Understandable as it is difficult to give advice on this sort of issue. I will continue to update though, as it may help others in the future

RoonilWazlib_2

What do the terms of your warranty say happens after a repair?

Tyler119

RoonilWazlib wrote: »

What do the terms of your warranty say happens after a repair?

Funny you should ask, I cannot get any terms of warranty from them. This was not provided after we took delivery of the item. In fact no paperwork was provided full stop.

Yesterday I got an email from the manufactures UK agent stating that it is a 2 year warranty on the sofa as a whole.

I found all this very poor as it was not what we were told and we were not provided any paperwork.

The only thing I can think of is if anything happens outside of the warranty period then I can still claim for money if any future repairs are required. My thinking is that a sofa is to last a reasonable period of time, and say in 36 months part of the frame breaks, then that is not a reasonable amount of time.

I'm only speculating now and I really hope that nothing does go wrong with it as we adore the sofa.

The retailer has not been helpful at all. they couldn't even tell me what the manufacturer recommends in terms of maintenance on the sofa's exterior. They even wrote that they had to call them to check up on the warranty period.

I don't know if I have any options apart from just not using that retailer again.