Faulty Vending Machine - Rental Agreement

Lorigar

Hello,


We are currently one year in on our 6 year rental agreement for our new larger vending machine. It was initially 'sold' to us as being a more modern design which would be easy to use and maintain. During this year the machine has had regular faults with computer chips, temperature faults, mechanical faults etc, and is very labour intensive to clean.


Our vending company will exchange a faulty machine after 10 reported faults but we are not willing to continue on with this particular model. We have asked that it be changed back to our previous model but have been told this will be really complicated as we have 5 years left on our rental agreement.


The agreement for the drinks supplies and service of the machine is with our vending company and the monthly rental charges are on a separate agreement with GE Capital Finance. Our rental payments are made on time and we have no complaints with regards to the service we receive from the vending company. All we want to do is change machines.


What I would like to know is whether our consumer rights for a rented machine are the same as a purchased machine? Any advice would be very much appreciated.


Failing that, placing the machine in the middle of our yard and running it over with one of our waste trucks seems a very appealing prospect....;)


Thanks,
Lori

dmg24

I assume the machine is being rented by a business? If so, you do not have consumer rights per se.

You do have rights in a business to business contract, and hopefully someone will be along soon who knows more in this area x

Debt_Free_Chick

Agree with DMG24 - the SOGA does not apply here (and might not apply to rentals anyway), but the point is you have no "consumer protection". CP is there to protect "the man in the street" - a business is assumed to be more savvy about contractual agreements.

You need to read the contract and see what "get out" clauses exist.

Lorigar

Hi, thank you both for your quick replies.

Yes it is a business, I'd done a quick google search for rental agreements before posting on here and the phrase "this does not affect your consumer rights" regularly occurred so I was hoping it would still apply to us.

I've got two weeks before the meeting with our supplier so I'll study our signed agreement in more detail before then.

Thanks again and enjoy your weekend.
Lori