A Little Advice On A TV Purchase

[Deleted User]

Hi there!
I have a long version of this but for now I'll keep this as short as possible!

Imagine if you will, let's say Jan 2017 you buy a premium TV (rrp £1200) that you get for a good deal, down to £900. This is from a major high street retailer in Oxford Street, not some dodgy website.

You notice an 'issue' with the image quality but decide to give the unit the benefit of the doubt and let it run in a bit, sometimes this fixes things. Well it doesn't, so in May (four months later) you call them up for a repair. They send someone to your house, replace the circuit board and leave.

You set the TV up, same issue.

So you call the retailer again, ask for a refund (because you can see where this is going). They refuse. You ask for a different model. They refuse. They demand another repair attempt.

Fine. So you comply, engineers turn up, you show them the fault, they identify that it shouldn't be doing that, they take it away. A week later it comes back, they say it's fixed. It isn't.

So you call up the retailer again. Ask for refund or replacement, they refuse again. Demand it gets sent away again.

So the repair agents who took it the second time (and failed to fix it) now take it again. Eventually they claim it's fixed. You call them, and being cautious about their honesty, try to find out what the fault actually was that they claim to have fixed. They don't explain it. You ask them if they can guarantee that the fault has been fixed. They do. You have it on tape.

You receive the TV again, check it. Guess what?

So you call up the retailer (I have left out a lot more grief, this has now been 9 months since you logged the first repair request) and inform them you are now recording everything for legal reasons.

All of a sudden a 'manager' type writes to you and offers you a coupon to the price you paid for the item originally. Still not offering a refund. Problem is, the market has changed so much that accepting the coupon means being forced to by a smaller, lower quality set as 'compensation'.

Now I'm curious as to what 'like for like' in the Consumer Rights Act means. Do they have to offer a TV which is objectively the same or better quality, or can they essentially compel you to accept a product of lower quality than the one you paid for almost a year ago? To be clear, the reason this has taken so long is solely the fault of the retailer.

Believe me, this is the pleasant version! Don't want to spoil anyone's tea. :rotfl:

KeithP

At this point I'll assume that the problem has been deemed due to an inherent fault. It certainly looks that way.

Under the Consumer Rights Act you have the right to a remedy.

After one attempt at a repair, if that repair failed to solve the problem, the consumer has the right to reject the goods for a refund - known as the final right to reject.
After six months that refund could be reduced to take account of the use you have had.

A 'credit note' is not a refund.

The CRA Explanatory Notes tell us:

A replacement would usually need to be identical, that is of the same make and model and if the goods were bought new then the replacement would need to be new.

SuperHan

After there has been one attempt at a repair, you are entitled to a refund under CRA 2015. You may wish to remind the retailer of this, and that you are wanting to make a claim under CRA and not the TV's warranty.

Greta_Sharbo

You may also wish to remind them that denying you your statutory rights is an offence and see how they respond.

glentoran99

SiTe4sorIII wrote: »

Hi there!
I have a long version of this but for now I'll keep this as short as possible!

Imagine if you will, let's say Jan 2017 you buy a premium TV (rrp £1200) that you get for a good deal, down to £900. This is from a major high street retailer in Oxford Street, not some dodgy website.

You notice an 'issue' with the image quality but decide to give the unit the benefit of the doubt and let it run in a bit, sometimes this fixes things. Well it doesn't, so in May (four months later) you call them up for a repair. They send someone to your house, replace the circuit board and leave.

You set the TV up, same issue.

So you call the retailer again, ask for a refund (because you can see where this is going). They refuse. You ask for a different model. They refuse. They demand another repair attempt.

Fine. So you comply, engineers turn up, you show them the fault, they identify that it shouldn't be doing that, they take it away. A week later it comes back, they say it's fixed. It isn't.

So you call up the retailer again. Ask for refund or replacement, they refuse again. Demand it gets sent away again.

So the repair agents who took it the second time (and failed to fix it) now take it again. Eventually they claim it's fixed. You call them, and being cautious about their honesty, try to find out what the fault actually was that they claim to have fixed. They don't explain it. You ask them if they can guarantee that the fault has been fixed. They do. You have it on tape.

You receive the TV again, check it. Guess what?

So you call up the retailer (I have left out a lot more grief, this has now been 9 months since you logged the first repair request) and inform them you are now recording everything for legal reasons.

All of a sudden a 'manager' type writes to you and offers you a coupon to the price you paid for the item originally. Still not offering a refund. Problem is, the market has changed so much that accepting the coupon means being forced to by a smaller, lower quality set as 'compensation'.

Now I'm curious as to what 'like for like' in the Consumer Rights Act means. Do they have to offer a TV which is objectively the same or better quality, or can they essentially compel you to accept a product of lower quality than the one you paid for almost a year ago? To be clear, the reason this has taken so long is solely the fault of the retailer.

Believe me, this is the pleasant version! Don't want to spoil anyone's tea. :rotfl:

I find that part strange, technology prices go down and not up, Whats the model of the TV you have?

Shaka_Zulu

The TV I bought in September is down £200 now.

[Deleted User]

Shaka_Zulu wrote: »

The TV I bought in September is down £200 now.

OP bought in January 2017, not four months ago..

Fosterdog

Moneyineptitude wrote: »

OP bought in January 2017, not four months ago..

But OP is implying that accepting a voucher for the full value paid is only going to buy a lower quality TV, even though in the space of a year the technology prices would have come down so the same size and quality TV would actually be less than it was a year ago. If Shaka_Zulu’s TV has come down by £200 in just four months, OPs TV should have a much more significant reduction after this length of time.

Basically while I agree that OP should be entitled to a cash refund rather than a voucher, he seems to want a refund of more than he paid or an exchange for a more expensive unit. Ultimately as the TV is older than 6 months the retailer doesn’t even have to offer a full refund so may do a full refund as a voucher but to insist on cash might well mean settling for a partial refund.

[Deleted User]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, just to clarify.

The TV is a Panasonic 58DX802B.
The only reason this has been going on for so many months is because the retailer refused any other action other than repeated repair attempts.
As far as a refund, I don't expect a refund of more than I paid for the unit. But as there are no like-for-like replacement televisions in the market I would be accepting an objectively worse TV.
I paid about £850 for a TV retailing at £1299 when I bought it. It recently dropped to £899.
It would be like ordering a Maserati and them demanding you accept a Mondeo instead.
I think it may be better to ask for a full refund (as it has always been faulty, so there is no full use of unit over time). And then publish all of my evidence about the retailer and my experience online to warn others about dealing with them.

NineDeuce

Why not just get a £300 TV and go on holiday?

[Deleted User]

I want what I paid for. Or I want my money back. They cannot even offer me a Panasonic of the model beneath the one I purchased for the same screen size (the 58EX750). The closest they get is two models down, which I never would have purchased in the first place. So it's a bit of a pickle.