Cooker repair - fair offer?

seradane

Hello,

We've recently had our 2.5 year old Smeg cooker develop a fault with the thermostat and also shattered the inner glass on the door. It is out of the warranty period because we foolishly did not register it upon purchase which would have given us a 5 year warranty.

Upon contacting Smeg, they sent out an engineer to assess. Once he completed his assessment, they came back to me to say they would, as a gesture of goodwill, cover the replacement parts but not labour. I've asked if they have an estimated cost for this.

While I wait for their response, is this a fair offer? On the one hand, I believe the Consumer Rights Act gives us some rights to argue that a 2.5 year old cooker should not be breaking yet, and we shouldn't have to pay for any of it. Or is that a bit tenuous and/or likely to be a prolonged argument if we invoke that? If we just pay for it, it will almost certainly be sorted before Christmas, which would also be helpful.

And also does our response here affect other things, like:
A ) should another part break in the near future?
B ) we've gone straight to Smeg but should we be contacting AO (where it was purchased) as I understand thats actually who is responsible under the Consumer Rights Act?
C ) Any home insurance claim (should we choose to claim)?

While we're a bit broke at the moment and this is an unwelcome cost just before Christmas, if it is fair that they are offering to split the costs we can afford it, so don't necessarily want to be digging our heels in if we're unlikely to get a better result. 

Thank you!

powerful_Rogue

seradane said:

Hello,

We've recently had our 2.5 year old Smeg cooker develop a fault with the thermostat and also shattered the inner glass on the door. It is out of the warranty period because we foolishly did not register it upon purchase which would have given us a 5 year warranty.

Upon contacting Smeg, they sent out an engineer to assess. Once he completed his assessment, they came back to me to say they would, as a gesture of goodwill, cover the replacement parts but not labour. I've asked if they have an estimated cost for this.

While I wait for their response, is this a fair offer? On the one hand, I believe the Consumer Rights Act gives us some rights to argue that a 2.5 year old cooker should not be breaking yet, and we shouldn't have to pay for any of it. Or is that a bit tenuous and/or likely to be a prolonged argument if we invoke that? If we just pay for it, it will almost certainly be sorted before Christmas, which would also be helpful.

And also does our response here affect other things, like:
A ) should another part break in the near future?
B ) we've gone straight to Smeg but should we be contacting AO (where it was purchased) as I understand thats actually who is responsible under the Consumer Rights Act?
C ) Any home insurance claim (should we choose to claim)?

While we're a bit broke at the moment and this is an unwelcome cost just before Christmas, if it is fair that they are offering to split the costs we can afford it, so don't necessarily want to be digging our heels in if we're unlikely to get a better result. 

Thank you!

If you want to claim under your Consumer Rights, you contact AO. They may ask for a report to show the fault was their at manufacture, but has only just reared it's ugly head. If the report is in your favour, they may offer a repair, exchange or refund. The refund will take into the 2.5 years use you have had.

This isn't likely to be a quick process and I doubt it will be sorted for Christmas.

As for home insurance, depends what your policy covers.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

powerful_Rogue said:If the report is in your favour, they may offer a repair, exchange or refund. The refund will take into the 2.5 years use you have had.

This isn't likely to be a quick process and I doubt it will be sorted for Christmas.

You forgot price reduction  

Might be wrong but I don't see AO repairing a 2.5 year oven and it seems a shame to waste a perfectly good oven that needs 2 simple things fixed. 

OP as above it's hard to sort something like this quickly, if Smeg can't repair until Jan you could look around for a local appliance repair place to see if they can be any quicker.

Whilst Smeg may appear generous with their offer of free parts, I suspect they cost pennies to produce and the labour fee will be much higher than an independent repair company. 

In terms of the cost, if whoever fixes it can put something in writing to say why the fault has occurred* and that shows on a 50/50 basis you didn't cause the problem I would go to AO and seek the cost of repair from them as damages.

If you paid with AO finance 

https://ao.com/help-and-advice/finance-and-savings/ao-finance/faqs

under "Who can I talk to about AO Finance?"

I'd imagine they'll be more helpful than general customer service. If you paid on a credit card the card provider is jointly liable under S75 (I assume the oven was over £100).

If you didn't pay on credit you'd probably be better off writing an old fashioned letter with a copy of the "report" rather than trying to deal with an off script matter with general CS via email/phone. 

*Did the glass break because the oven got too hot due to the non-working thermostat? If so you just need something to state the thermostat has failed and it doesn't appear to be due to user error/misuse. 

seradane

The glass door broke about an hour after the thermostat issue appeared and while the oven was still running, so I can only assume that the oven overheating was the cause of the breakage.

If we go ahead and pay for the repair now, with the report in hand that says it wasn't user fault, could we then go back to AO and ask them to reimburse us? I don't mind having the argument be prolonged if it's already sorted. Or do we need to go through them/their repair channels to have any chance of them covering the cost?

No we didn't buy it on credit, so sounds like the letter would be the best approach. Thank you

BoGoF

seradane said:

If we go ahead and pay for the repair now, with the report in hand that says it wasn't user fault, could we then go back to AO and ask them to reimburse us? I don't mind having the argument be prolonged if it's already sorted. Or do we need to go through them/their repair channels to have any chance of them covering the cost?

You could go back to AO but any reimbursement would be a gesture of goodwill as you haven't followed the correct process to exercise your Consumer Rights. "Wasn't user fault" probably won't help you much - it needs to be shown that the part that has failed had an inherent fault at the point of manufacture.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

seradane said:

The glass door broke about an hour after the thermostat issue appeared and while the oven was still running, so I can only assume that the oven overheating was the cause of the breakage.

If we go ahead and pay for the repair now, with the report in hand that says it wasn't user fault, could we then go back to AO and ask them to reimburse us? I don't mind having the argument be prolonged if it's already sorted. Or do we need to go through them/their repair channels to have any chance of them covering the cost?

No we didn't buy it on credit, so sounds like the letter would be the best approach. Thank you

It really depends, if you contact AO they should repair (or replace) within a reasonable time. If they agreed to that it is an acceptable remedy. If they said they wasn't willing to do either you can either reject the oven for a refund minus use or seek a price reduction (the cost of repair). 

The other avenue is to seek the cost of repair as damages. 

If you can't get the oven fixed one way or the other before Christmas then the Consumer Rights avenue is probably easier as you have clearly worded legislation to state your position, although with damages it seems clear to me that you've suffered a loss as a result of the breach of contract. 

BoGoF said:

You could go back to AO but any reimbursement would be a gesture of goodwill as you haven't followed the correct process to exercise your Consumer Rights. "Wasn't user fault" probably won't help you much - it needs to be shown that the part that has failed had an inherent fault at the point of manufacture.

As above the CRA notes the legislation doesn't prevent the consumer from seeking other remedies including damages.

Regarding proof, there's two considerations, the first is it's balance of probability so what is most likely, a thermostat isn't a part of the oven the user interacts with and if it's shown it isn't likely to be have been caused due to error/misuse it does seem to lead to a logical conclusion it failed on it's on which means the part wasn't durable (which is an implied term and if not met means the goods do not conform).

The other issue is AO are very unlikely to want to go to court to argue the consumer's "report" from a genuine  independent appliance repair company isn't sufficient enough as it would likely cost them more than the repair.