Repair or replace item

Seanphoto

In May this year I purchased a Nikon camera from John Lewis. I used the camera whilst on holiday and noticed it was not performing correctly and had, what seemed to be, an intermittent fault. I could not recify the apparent fault whilst away. On my return I contacted Nikon support to see if it was simply a menu item that I needed to adjust in order to fix the problem. At that stage they couldn’t identify the fault and we couldn’t reproduce the problem whilst speaking to them. Their advice was to see if it happened again and then obviously contact the store. It happened again. a few weeks later. As can be appreciated, you do not use a camera on a daily basis, and especially all the functions, so for this apparent fault to reoccure didn’t become apparent immediately. Having contacted JL they informed me that my only solution was to have the item repaired. My argument was that as the item was only three months old and that I had potentially identified a fault within 14 days of purchase then they should honour the replacement as I believed it was faulty at the time of purchase and hadn’t developed it at a later stage. They refused stating that it was over 30 days. On this MSE site and the Consumer Rights Act 2015 it does state you have a right to ‘repair OR replacement’ after the 30 days. I believe it should be replaced not repaired. I agree that I did not notify JL within the 30 days (after which they say they then offer repair) but with such an item it’s not always possible to use all the functions every time the camera is used so to identify that particular fault is difficult. There was obviously some sort of fault for me to contact Nikon and they, not being able to readily identify it, so informing me to continue to see if it occurred again. JL state that I should have notified them anyway even though I could not actually identify the exact problem at that stage. It simply could have been a menu item and they would have advised me to speak to Nikon direct anyhow.
Can I insist they replace rather than repair the Camera? If I can, what is the authority for that?
Many thanks

bigisi

Seanphoto wrote: »

In May this year I purchased a Nikon camera from John Lewis. I used the camera whilst on holiday and noticed it was not performing correctly and had, what seemed to be, an intermittent fault. I could not recify the apparent fault whilst away. On my return I contacted Nikon support to see if it was simply a menu item that I needed to adjust in order to fix the problem. At that stage they couldn’t identify the fault and we couldn’t reproduce the problem whilst speaking to them. Their advice was to see if it happened again and then obviously contact the store. It happened again. a few weeks later. As can be appreciated, you do not use a camera on a daily basis, and especially all the functions, so for this apparent fault to reoccure didn’t become apparent immediately. Having contacted JL they informed me that my only solution was to have the item repaired. My argument was that as the item was only three months old and that I had potentially identified a fault within 14 days of purchase then they should honour the replacement as I believed it was faulty at the time of purchase and hadn’t developed it at a later stage. They refused stating that it was over 30 days. On this MSE site and the Consumer Rights Act 2015 it does state you have a right to ‘repair OR replacement’ after the 30 days. I believe it should be replaced not repaired. I agree that I did not notify JL within the 30 days (after which they say they then offer repair) but with such an item it’s not always possible to use all the functions every time the camera is used so to identify that particular fault is difficult. There was obviously some sort of fault for me to contact Nikon and they, not being able to readily identify it, so informing me to continue to see if it occurred again. JL state that I should have notified them anyway even though I could not actually identify the exact problem at that stage. It simply could have been a menu item and they would have advised me to speak to Nikon direct anyhow.
Can I insist they replace rather than repair the Camera? If I can, what is the authority for that?
Many thanks

No.

The choice of remedy is theirs. You can let them know your preference but there's no insisting on it.