How to accept a company's "full and final" offer without limiting future choices

tonyh66

Deleted_User wrote: »

Thank you all for the replies; I am most grateful. I shall try to address the points raised:

- The tank was installed by an independent groundworks company. The installation of the tank was done correctly.

- The tank was supplied by the manufacturer. They are a massive engineering company based in Ireland (2018 revenue over €4bn). It is the manufacturer who I am having my dispute with.

- There is a separate side to this where the tank was sold to me by Jewsons; other than taking my payment (by credit card), Jewsons have never sent me a receipt nor an email confirmation of my order, despite my asking at least five times that they do so. I think that legally I should be chasing everything via Jewsons as the order was placed with them; however, Jewsons have not responded to a single form of communication that I have sent regarding this.

- The tank was purchased in 2016. It was installed in 2016 and connected to our new sewage system. I identified the fault in late 2016 and reported it then. The manufacturer responded in early 2017 by conducting their "repair" which was an utter bodge of a job. The new sewage system only became active in 2017, which is when the tank first came into proper use. We emptied the tank a year later in 2018 and the company emptying it explained the flaw that I had spotted but also several other aspects to the flaw. I resent my complaint from 2016 about the tank as a formal complaint in 2018 and the company and I have been in discussion since then (it took them three months just to get an independent engineer out to consider how to repair the tank).

- The tank was incorrectly designed as follows. The central access chamber is meant to give one access to four chambers: two are full of those white hair curler like things, the third is the final desludging chamber and then there is the main holding section of the tank. The correct tank design is meant to have the four chambers designed so that a 4" sewage pipe can be inserted into the main chamber to suck all the solids out and - perhaps most importantly - the main section of tank is meant to be accessible so that the 4" pipe can reach underneath the other three chambers. The correct design will prevent the build up of solid waste sections underneath the chambers. In our tank they misaligned the central section that holds the three chambers, which left no access whatsoever to the main chamber; this means that it was impossible to get a 1" pipe into the main chamber, let alone a 4" pipe. It was impossible to get a 4" pipe to access the areas underneath the other chambers.

- This would all be so much easier to explain with the diagrams that I prepared for my complaint!

Is there any formal reason to not mention the company name, product and explain the design flaw?

So the manufacturer screwed up the construction of the actual tank. I take it they want to cut a new manhole in the top so you can access the chamber.
Was the engineer truely independent seeing as the company found them?
Not sure where you can go from here?
Have you considered contacting a solicitor?
The repair might be adequate if all they are doing is cutting and access hatch in the top, I might push for another 3 years warranty on the repair and make sure it is written down what it is covering exactly (a solicitor might be handy for this).
Good luck with whatever you do, let us know how it turns out.