Retailer won’t honour the 5 year guarantee

darkerknight

Does anyone in this forum have any knowledge of the options a customer/consumer has when a retailer would not honour their 5 year guarantee for a product.

I am sure many of you would have questions about the product, the fault in the product and communications exchanged with the retailer. In this case I am just looking for the next steps when I have hit a roadblock with the retailer after I have tried to request a replacement for the product that has developed a fault. It is well within the guarantee period. 

p00hsticks

Can you confirm that the guarantee is provided by the retailer and not the manufacturer, and what the terms of the guarantee are (e.g.refund, replacement, repair ?) 

darkerknight

They are supposed to replace the faulty product. The retailer's reason for denial for replacement - "As this is not a manufacturing defect and caused through maintenance, this is not covered under your warranty."

However, I know that it was not caused due to poor maintenance but due to poor quality of the product. 

Hoenir

darkerknight said:

However, I know that it was not caused due to poor maintenance but due to poor quality of the product. 

Is this on the basis of an independent report or a personal opinion? 

ArbitraryRandom

darkerknight said:

They are supposed to replace the faulty product. The retailer's reason for denial for replacement - "As this is not a manufacturing defect and caused through maintenance, this is not covered under your warranty."

However, I know that it was not caused due to poor maintenance but due to poor quality of the product. 

You don't want to give specifics, and that's fine, but you are wrong if you think it's because we're nosy - it's because it means we can only give generic advice which may or may not be applicable and that you can read given on any of the other threads made in this part of the forum... or indeed the general advice you were given on your previous thread re the shower screen... 

But, because I can't sleep...

1. Your rights under the warranty will depend on your warranty - and if those terms are legally enforceable/if they contradict or attempt to limit your statutory consumer rights (which would make them unenforceable)... we can't read those terms, because you've not shared them with us. They may say that it's up to you to prove the fault is inherent (due to how it was made or the materials it was made with, not how it's been used or maintained). Should you decide to share a link or copy the [redacted] text, then we'd be happy to tell you if the retailer is correct in their response to you or not.



2. Moving on, your other rights would be under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 - Broadly speaking (depending on the nature of the product) the Act says any fault which develops in the first 6 months is assumed to be inherent... after that initial 6 months this assumption is not made and it's for the customer to prove the fault was present at the time of purchase. 

(As was explained to you in the previous thread) most often, that means you paying for an independent report - again, no idea what type of product this is or how much it cost; so only you can judge if it's worth paying maybe £30-60 to get a local repair person to have a look at it and say what the problem is. 

IF the report agrees with you and the fault is inherent, then the retailer is liable to repair or replace the item at no cost to you (and you can claim back the cost of the report). If they can't repair or replace then they should give you a partial refund (the time you have had the item taken from the expected life of the item). 

IF the retailer STILL refuses liability, then your remaining option is to send them a 'letter before action' (we can help draft the letter, but we would need more specifics at that point), followed by taking them to court. Again, we can help with this... but only if you tell us the specifics. 

Olinda99

I am guessing all warranties are different in what they cover and what they exclude, so a good starting point would be to post the warranty terms and a description of the fault here.

Undervalued

darkerknight said:

They are supposed to replace the faulty product. The retailer's reason for denial for replacement - "As this is not a manufacturing defect and caused through maintenance, this is not covered under your warranty."

However, I know that it was not caused due to poor maintenance but due to poor quality of the product. 

In which case you will need an independent report from a suitably qualified and / or experienced person confirming that. 

You can add the reasonable cost of such a report to your claim. 

If the matter is still disputed and you have to go to court keep in mind that the court will expect you (and the other party) to have acted in a reasonable and proportionate manner. They are unlikely to countenance say a £500 report for a £50 fix on a £100 product! 

RefluentBeans

ArbitraryRandom said:

darkerknight said:

They are supposed to replace the faulty product. The retailer's reason for denial for replacement - "As this is not a manufacturing defect and caused through maintenance, this is not covered under your warranty."

However, I know that it was not caused due to poor maintenance but due to poor quality of the product. 

You don't want to give specifics, and that's fine, but you are wrong if you think it's because we're nosy - it's because it means we can only give generic advice which may or may not be applicable and that you can read given on any of the other threads made in this part of the forum... or indeed the general advice you were given on your previous thread re the shower screen... 

But, because I can't sleep...

1. Your rights under the warranty will depend on your warranty - and if those terms are legally enforceable/if they contradict or attempt to limit your statutory consumer rights (which would make them unenforceable)... we can't read those terms, because you've not shared them with us. They may say that it's up to you to prove the fault is inherent (due to how it was made or the materials it was made with, not how it's been used or maintained). Should you decide to share a link or copy the [redacted] text, then we'd be happy to tell you if the retailer is correct in their response to you or not.



2. Moving on, your other rights would be under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 - Broadly speaking (depending on the nature of the product) the Act says any fault which develops in the first 6 months is assumed to be inherent... after that initial 6 months this assumption is not made and it's for the customer to prove the fault was present at the time of purchase. 

(As was explained to you in the previous thread) most often, that means you paying for an independent report - again, no idea what type of product this is or how much it cost; so only you can judge if it's worth paying maybe £30-60 to get a local repair person to have a look at it and say what the problem is. 

IF the report agrees with you and the fault is inherent, then the retailer is liable to repair or replace the item at no cost to you (and you can claim back the cost of the report). If they can't repair or replace then they should give you a partial refund (the time you have had the item taken from the expected life of the item). 

IF the retailer STILL refuses liability, then your remaining option is to send them a 'letter before action' (we can help draft the letter, but we would need more specifics at that point), followed by taking them to court. Again, we can help with this... but only if you tell us the specifics. 

Very well explained, and generous given the lack of information. 

OP - I get you don’t want to give out information but the information you get here is as bespoke as the information you can get from the webpages that give out general consumer advice. If you want actual specific advice, you normally have to give out more information. 

The general advice is correct. The warranty is a contract and you can hold the company to that. But the contract goes above what you’re legally entitled to, as they are additive to your rights. So they could very well have clauses like they will repair the product only, that you are entitled to free parts, but labour is not included; you have to fill in a 17 page form; your product can’t have any cosmetic damage (looking at technology for that one). 

Your rights (from the CRA) are with the retailer, and after 6 months you have to prove the product is inherently faulty or was not fit for the intended purpose. The latter is a hard hill to climb. Think of a washing machine - your washing machine may be a small washing machine and pitched at the budget option for people who are just moving into their own property. If you buy that machine and put it in a property that has a large family with washing being done every day, the product may have been fit for purpose and not inherently faulty but still fail after 18 months as it’s being used much more than it was intended to be used. If you’re making a complaint about the longevity of the product you will need to critically analyse what marketing you saw to make you buy the product and if it doesn’t live up to that.

Like I said, it’s very hard to give specific advice as we don’t know if you’re talking about a set of windows, a car, a tee-shirt, a phone, a cooker, or any other product. 

Okell

darkerknight said:

Does anyone in this forum have any knowledge of the options a customer/consumer has when a retailer would not honour their 5 year guarantee for a product.

I am sure many of you would have questions about the product, the fault in the product and communications exchanged with the retailer. In this case I am just looking for the next steps when I have hit a roadblock with the retailer after I have tried to request a replacement for the product that has developed a fault. It is well within the guarantee period. 

You choose not to provide any information that is relevant or that might be helpful to anyone trying to answer your question.

Which means that helpful posters have to write unnecessarily long responses in order to try to ensure that they cover everything that might be relevant to your individual situation - which you don't want to tell us about

What a waste of time.  (Hope @ArbitraryRandom got some sleep...)

macman

I an unaware of any retailer with a 5 or 6  year warranty policy, except JL and RS for TV and audio?
Pointless to expect meaningful help without giving the most basic info.

TELLIT01

Without at least the precise wording of the warranty it's impossible to answer the question.  A lot of warranties won't give a full cash refund (for example) if the product is a long way into the warranty period.  It's not unreasonable for the retailer to want to get the item checked out before deciding what to do.  It seems that the OP and the retailer differ on their opinion of the reason for the failure.  To strengthen their claim that the retailer is wrong the OP will need to get an independent assessment of the item, and will have to pay for that.