Broken watch under warranty

spiderkin

Hello, I was hoping for some advice please!

I bought a Marc Jacobs watch in April 2023 from TKMaxx for considerably less than RRP. It came with a 2-year warranty and the head of the crown snapped off when I was trying to change the time when the clocks went back.

I've just heard from their repair centre and they say they can't fix it, but they'd like to offer me 30%  off a new watch. I would rather have the watch replaced like-for-like or the purchase price returned to me. 

What are my rights here? Thanks in advance

Aylesbury_Duck

If you're in the process of a warranty claim, your rights are described in the warranty terms.  We can't see them, so you'll have to dig them out and see what you're entitled to in these circumstances.

If you go down the consumer rights route, then assuming they've acknowledged the fault, they have the choice of repairing, replacing or refunding, with a refund reduced for use to date.  A watch should last a good number of years so I wouldn't expect the reduction to be much, but you'll have to weigh up whether say, a 90% refund of what you paid is better or worse than 30% off a new watch at full price.

spiderkin

Thank you for your reply - it gave me the courage to turn down the 30% off code that I couldn't afford to use. I wrote back asking if I could just have a replacement like-for-like but they didn't have any in stock, so they offered me any replacement from their current stock up fo the original RRP of my watch which was 3x what I'd paid for it. So I now have a new watch heading my way! 

DullGreyGuy

Getting a replacement is a reasonable outcome, the "three times the price" is obviously a bit misleading. Until recently they are just Fossil watches with some different branding and a 50-100% increase in price

Grumpy_chap

DullGreyGuy said:

Getting a replacement is a reasonable outcome, the "three times the price" is obviously a bit misleading. Until recently they are just Fossil watches with some different branding and a 50-100% increase in price

Now there's a thing.
Isn't Fossil a more premium brand for a watch than Marc Jacobs in any case?

RefluentBeans

Aylesbury_Duck said:

If you're in the process of a warranty claim, your rights are described in the warranty terms.  We can't see them, so you'll have to dig them out and see what you're entitled to in these circumstances.

If you go down the consumer rights route, then assuming they've acknowledged the fault, they have the choice of repairing, replacing or refunding, with a refund reduced for use to date.  A watch should last a good number of years so I wouldn't expect the reduction to be much, but you'll have to weigh up whether say, a 90% refund of what you paid is better or worse than 30% off a new watch at full price.

To add your consumer rights are with the retailer. I assume the 30% voucher was from the manufacturers warranty, which is in addition to the consumer rights. 

If proceeding down the consumer rights route - and outside of 6 month period, I would expect that TKMaxx would want a report to say the watch was inherently faulty and not from a result of dropping it etc. - they’ve never really seemed one to have an easy returns policy but hopefully they’ll inspect it themselves and make the call. 

photome

DullGreyGuy said:

Getting a replacement is a reasonable outcome, the "three times the price" is obviously a bit misleading. Until recently they are just Fossil watches with some different branding and a 50-100% increase in price

Is it no longer the case that Fossil make Marc Jacob’s watches ? 

I have always persuaded my wife to have fossil watches over the fashion brands as it’s exactly the same watch with a different name on it

DullGreyGuy

Grumpy_chap said:

DullGreyGuy said:

Getting a replacement is a reasonable outcome, the "three times the price" is obviously a bit misleading. Until recently they are just Fossil watches with some different branding and a 50-100% increase in price

Now there's a thing.
Isn't Fossil a more premium brand for a watch than Marc Jacobs in any case?

It's probably a more honest brand for a watch but overall I am sure most would rate Marc as the more premium brand. 

photome said:

DullGreyGuy said:

Getting a replacement is a reasonable outcome, the "three times the price" is obviously a bit misleading. Until recently they are just Fossil watches with some different branding and a 50-100% increase in price

Is it no longer the case that Fossil make Marc Jacob’s watches ? 

I have always persuaded my wife to have fossil watches over the fashion brands as it’s exactly the same watch with a different name on it

No, they changed in 2019 to Bedrock Manufacturing, a company founded by the same person as Fossil was originally. Their own watches sell for significantly more than Fossil but it was pointed out by a certain professor that they conducted a lot of market research and setup their manufacturing base in Detroit after finding people (in the us) would pay 3x as much for a product associated with the city than the identical watch made overseas.