Martin Lewis: Faulty tech? Don’t let ‘em fob you off with ‘sorry you’re out of warranty’

MSE_Emily

If you've bought some tech that's gone faulty and you've had to take it back, don't let them fob you off with 'sorry you're out of warranty'. That's the message from MoneySavingExpert.com founder Martin Lewis' in his latest video. Watch Martin’s Warranty Schmaranty two-minute video, or carry on reading below...

Read the full story:

Martin Lewis: Faulty tech? Don’t let ‘em fob you off with ‘sorry you’re out of warranty’

If you haven’t already, join the forum to reply.

powerful_Rogue

Not the best article. You fail to mention that after six months the onus is on the purchaser to show the item is faulty due to a fault at manufacture.

I can see the threads on here now - 'My phone broke after 14 months and Martin Lewis said to go back to the shop and ask for a partial refund, repair or replacement'.

photome

the last paragraph says

If you've got a faulty handset or a faulty laptop and you take it back and you don't think it was satisfactory quality, as described, fit for purpose and it didn't last a reasonable length of time, then you go to the store that you bought it from and you say: “I would like either a partial refund or a repair or a replacement, please.”

it doesnt say what happens when the store says sorry you are getting nothing

bris

Definitely not a great article from Martin.

It doesn't say what hoops they need to jump through to prove the item is inherently faulty.

There are procedures and burden of proof to think about, the retailer doesn't have to do anything apart from say no, go away and come back when you prove it.

HillStreetBlues

photome said:

it doesnt say what happens when the store says sorry you are getting nothing

You just say the magic words "Martin Says"  and they instantly give you a full refund and lots of compensation as well.

singhini

HillStreetBlues said:

photome said:

it doesnt say what happens when the store says sorry you are getting nothing

You just say the magic words "Martin Says"  and they instantly give you a full refund and lots of compensation as well.

Don't forget the 8% interest aswell 

MuckChucker

I think a few above are missing the point. The focus of the piece is not on the fault, the focus is on how long the product has lasted. You do not need to prove a fault, you're not claiming there's a specific fault, you're claiming it hasn't lasted as long as it should have. If it stops working inside an unreasonably short period of time* (and obviously you've not actually physically damaged it), you absolutely should be going back to the retailer.

I get a bit blue in the face explaining how warranties are little more than marketing tools when you have excellent consumer rights like we do in the UK and Ireland. The best examples can be found over on HUKD and AVForums etc. with regards to OLED TVs and their warranty terms not covering an inherent feature/fault of OLED technology i.e. organic pixels wear, sometimes (a lot of the time) unevenly and thus you get "burn-in". Users over there falling over themselves to pay John Lewis extra money for an additional warranty to cover this possibility. This baffles me. If a ~£1000+ TV breaks itself, performing it's sole function, inside anything less than 5 years it is definitely going back to the retailer and if needs be, before the small claims court - not that any retailer lets it go that far.

Retailers know what they're doing and preying on consumers ignorance. Back over on AVForums, one particular retailer does engage with these OLED complaints and deals with these ones quietly (they pay for screen replacements) but this is only after the customer has been fobbed off at store level with the usual "not under warranty" tomfoolery so I'm not in much of a hurry to heap too much praise in their direction.

Any warranty is in addition to your consumer rights - are people not thought this basic rule in school anymore? 

*this is purposely vague as there are a few factors to consider e.g. cost, function performed, moving parts etc.

MarvinDay

MuckChucker said:

I think a few above are missing the point. The focus of the piece is not on the fault, the focus is on how long the product has lasted. You do not need to prove a fault, you're not claiming there's a specific fault, you're claiming it hasn't lasted as long as it should have.

I'm sorry, but you are the one missing the point.
After 6 months from the time of purchase, the fault and the reason for the fault are two of the most important facts that a consumer may have to know when attempting to claim on their statutory rights.
After this 6 month period, the retailer has the legal right to insist that a consumer can show that the fault occurred due to an inherent defect (such as poor assembly, poor quality components etc).
And yes, by claiming that an item hasn't lasted as long as it should, you are stating that it wasn't durable, thus faulty and are expected to show that this fault and the reason for it is a manufacturing defect.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Of course the above points are valid but swing hard in the opposite side of the article.

The consumer doesn't need proof that the goods are faulty, they need to articulate on the balance of probability that the goods do not conform to the contract. 

The article is poor for not mentioning this at all, particularly as it applies to the 30 day short term right to reject as well which is mentioned in the article, but it's probably difficult to explain it in language that is both correct and understood. 

dbsevern

I have a related question on this subject.  Where does a consumer stand if they have purchased a perfectly good piece of tech, but a subsequent software update by the manufacturer appears to have rendered it unfit for purpose?  I have a Garmin watch, purchased second hand from Ebay (so no recourse to original seller) which worked fine for a number of months.  It then stopped recording running activities - turning off randomly during the run, and I believe this was caused by a software update from the manufacturer.  A number of other users of the same watch report a similar issue in recent months, so it looks like something that started happening on update to me.  Garmin support say there is no way to roll back the software to see if it improves, so unless they admit it may have been caused by them and investigate, we are left with technology that is no longer fit for purpose, having effectively been broken by the manufacturer.  Where can we go from here - Garmin have offered to see me a reconditioned watch, but if it is software that has caused the issue, it would also go wrong as soon as it updated to the latest version.

sevenhills

If a manufacturer of a quality product was to be told that their product only lasted eighteen months, they would be likely to help with the repair.
That depends on the manufacturer, the product and the type of fault with the product.
I used to work in TV repair and some TVs with certain faults would be repaired up to two years old.