Rusty tumble dryer

steveeeee

We bought a Candy condensing tumbler dryer from ao.com in November 2019 and the inside of the drum has become quite rusty, to the extent that it's starting to mark clothes, especially lighter-coloured items.  Having registered the unit with Candy we had a 1 year full warranty, and a further 9 years' free parts.  I called Candy and all they could do was offer an engineer visit (this coming Sunday!) and parts would be covered by the warranty, but I'll have to pay the engineer £125 for the visit.  That's almost exactly half the cost of the unit!

I'm not happy at the thing going rusty though.  Prior to this unit we had an old Bosch condensing dryer that we inherited from parents and then ran for 10 years until (we think) the heating element failed and we decided it was more cost effective to replace than repair.  There wasn't a spot of rust on the Bosch and I don't think we've changed the way that we dry clothes between the two machines.  This indicates to me that the Candy machine is poorly made and not fit for purpose.

It sounds like I need to call ao.com and have a conversation about this.  I've never done this before, though, I'm not very good at confrontation, and want to make sure I get this right.  Per the consumer rights regs, I believe the dryer hasn't lasted a suitable amount of time but as it's over 6 months old I'm not sure I can prove that it was inherently faulty.  Would you agree that the Candy machine having gone so rusty in under 2 years is not fit for purpose and indicates inherent faultiness?  I guess what I'd like is for ao.com either to contribute to or cover the cost of the engineer's visit.  Does this sound reasonable?  From other posts here it seems like ao.com are pretty fair about things like this.  Are there any key phrases I should use or should I just give them a call and see how it goes?

TIA!

Aylesbury_Duck

Give them a call.  Be polite and reasonable and see what they say.  If they won't help, then you can still exercise your consumer rights, but will need to get someone out to inspect it and deem it to be faulty first.

Comparisons to a Bosch equivalent may be unreasonable, because I suspect a Bosch machine is built to a better standard than a Candy one, and the price will reflect that.