Shower Valve Had 10 Year Guarantee When Purchased - Retailer Now Says It Had 5 Year

kibopuppydog

Hi Lip_Stick, Once again thank you for the time and effort you are putting into this. Yes, I went through the 2015 catalogue OK, and took screenshots of the relevant pages I needed. There were clear references to the oval triple units being 10yr, so that's brilliant.

As for the 2016 catalogue and your 5 yr ref, if that's the case, then maybe the catalogue was issued after I purchased my unit in April 2016. May I ask you to post me a link for the 2016 catalogue, and I can carefully go through it in my own time - thank you. If I find the publication date to be summer/autumn/winter 2016, then you've nailed it for me and the 10yr guarantee applies to my purchase. Yipeeeee!       I will report back on my findings with the 2016, when I've finished checking it.

Hi KeithP, yes, agreed, it's just what I needed.

Hi Sheramber, I didn't use the catalogues, I purchased the unit online in April 2016, and it did have a 10yr confirmation on the webpage. The catalogues in this research are proving to be useful in confirming what guarantee was offered either side of my purchase. I suspect the 2016 catalogue came out after April. As mentioned above, if I can establish the publish date from the 2016 catalogue (and it does turn out to be post April 2016, when the 5 yr guarantee was introduced), then this will totally support what I've been saying, and confirms that my unit came with a 10yr guarantee.

So, thank you everyone for your interest, and very kind support, (particularly Lip-Stick for his catalogue finds which are the clinchers). I promise to keep this discussion updated with my 2016 catalogue findings, and then with what happened when I contacted them for another replacement, and also, of course, how the guarantee conversation went. However, with Christmas around the corner, I'll probably leave contacting them till January.

(Lip_Stick, if you could oblige with the 2016 copy for me, that would be much appreciated).

So unless anything else comes up, it's bye for now, take real care of yourselves, and have a lovely, but safe, Christmas and New Year, (and keep an eye open for the email notification of my updates ..... should prove rather interesting reading)

zoob

Well I have to say well done for getting so far and hopefully you get sorted
But on reading the back page off the catalogue it states that the guarantees  need to be registered to apply, so maybe check your email history and you could show you've followed there guarantee terms 
Once you've got that at least you've got some legal clout as without that your depending on there goodwill 

Were_Doomed

Am I reading right that the unit is actually OK at the moment but you're expecting it to fail soon?

kibopuppydog

Hi Zoob, Thank you for your sentiments, and an interesting observation. The T&C's state that an email is sent out within 14 days, for the customer to fill in. As far as I recall, no such email was received. Had it been I would have filled it in, and noted this on the paperwork and/or spreadsheet. But I didn't buy from the catalogue. As to whether this requirement was on the website, remains to be seen - I certainly don't recall coming across this, nor of doing this. I'm normally pretty astute to such things, and if it was there but I didn't come across it, I would argue that, under the 2015 Consumer Rights Act, this key part of the contract wasn't made sufficiently clear, and that being in the small print, on the 'back page' is unacceptable. You can't plaster the 10yr guarantee rosette on the front webpage, and then sneak in a small print clause somewhere at the end. Furthermore, I would argue that I have offered evidence of the 10yr guarantee, and had there been some small print, then it would be down to them to prove this. Personally, I don't think they would bother and, if they have any sense, they will realize it won't get them very far anyway. However, thank you for pointing this out.

Were_Doomed, no, the unit has started to fail and is progressively becoming more difficult to turn. I'm just preparing myself, and ascertaining how much supportive information I have to hand to ensure that I handle the matter in the best possible way - that's how I do things!

unforeseen

If there is a warranty or guarantee on an item then there will normally be a registration card or further instructions included with it. What paperwork came with it? Did you read and take the actions that it stipulated. 

It is very rare that the only mention of a guarantee would be on a catalogue or a little icon on a Web page. 

kibopuppydog

Hi Unforeseen, to be honest I don't remember what came with the valve, but what I would say is that if there had been something to fill in for such valuable cover, then I would have done it. However, interestingly, as I mentioned earlier the T&C's in the 2015 catalogue state that an email will be sent, so based on this, their process is different. To be honest and in view of the 'off-the-cuff' comment that I only have 5yrs, I question just how organised they actually are. As for it being rare for there being no requirement for filling in registrations, I recently threw out a Salamander Shower Pump (absolutely diabolical - service and product - but that's another story, and not for this discussion), and replaced it with a Stuart Turner pump which offered a 5yr guarantee. When I looked into this a bit further, I found that their guarantee only needed a proof of purchase to verify the purchase date. So they provide a long guarantee, without any strings attached. Nevertheless, thank you for your comments.

Lip_Stick

Here’s the 2016 catalogue and it says the publish date is July. I am not sure if that means published online (expect it does) or published in print, but I doubt there is going to be a lot of difference between the two. I would take a screenshot of that date with the catalogue page now.

https://issuu.com/victoriaplum.com/docs/1607_pdf/140

As for warranty, the items are made and sold by Victoria Plum. It is their own product so can’t see why anyone would need to register the guarantee when the receipt provides all the essential details. It’s not like VP are a third party.

DiddyDavies

Lip_Stick said:

As for warranty, the items are made and sold by Victoria Plum. It is their own product so can’t see why anyone would need to register the guarantee when the receipt provides all the essential details. It’s not like VP are a third party.

If I was a cynic, I would say it's so that they could advertise the extended guarantee, something that might entice customers to buy the item knowing that a fair proportion of those people wouldn't bother registering thus reducing the company liability for failures in the future.
Either that or it's simply to get customers details so they can be added onto mailing lists.

Lip_Stick

DiddyDavies said:

Lip_Stick said:

As for warranty, the items are made and sold by Victoria Plum. It is their own product so can’t see why anyone would need to register the guarantee when the receipt provides all the essential details. It’s not like VP are a third party.

If I was a cynic, I would say it's so that they could advertise the extended guarantee, something that might entice customers to buy the item knowing that a fair proportion of those people wouldn't bother registering thus reducing the company liability for failures in the future.
Either that or it's simply to get customers details so they can be added onto mailing lists.

I’m inclined to agree with you. Hopefully, the fact that they’ve already honoured the warranty proves that registration wasn’t needed.

kibopuppydog

Lip_Stick, I can't thank you enough for getting me the 2016 edition. Unfortunately, where it says 'published July 2016', this isn't correct. The T&C's in that catalogue state that it's valid to 31 August 2016, hence it covers Aug15 to Aug16. WRT the previous catalogue you sent me (from Fliphtml5), the T&C date is 31July 2015. Anyway, it's the last one that's relevant to me, and it's clear that each successive year leading up to 2016, the emphasis on long guarantees is dwindling. In2014/2015 they had the 10yr guarantee posted on most pages, including shower valves. In 2016, there is a mention of a 10yr guarantee on Page 2 (Reasons for shopping with VP), saying all their products are covered by the 10yr guarantee. So now, on the shower valve page there's no mention of this (not unreasonable), and the T&C's yet again say that they email the form out to the customer. We won't say more on this as we covered this issue earlier. On your second entry, yes, I agree, they offered me guarantee cover once before so whether or not I received and filled in the paperwork, is no longer very relevant, and I think the blanket mention of "all their products are covered" is sufficient for me to expect them to honour my 10 yr guarantee. It might just be that the VP person got the year wrong, as to when they reduced the cover to 5yr guarantee - this might have happened in the Sept16 to aug17 catalogue - but this is irrelevant to me.

DiddyDavies - yes, I agree with you on the 1st point. As for collecting data, why would they need to do this if they get this info at the time of purchase.