Delays to sofa repair

Jopo1

We have a "technical" sofa that reclines, cools our drinks, charges our phone, has bluetooth speakers etc.  It's covered by a 5 year warranty by Guardsman.

In early May, one side of the double sofa electronics stopped working in early May and we raised a claim with Guardsman to get it repaired.

Long story short, someone at Guardsmam has dropped the ball twice with our claim leading to long delays in getting a part sourced and ordered.  After sending a yet another reminder email they have finally ordered the part at the start of August. Tt will take 8-12 weeks to receive, then of course we've got to wait for the engineer to come and replace it. So we'll be unable to use the sofa until end of November, possibly early december. Guardsman has apologised for the delay and raised a complaint on my behalf. 

However I would like to message them and say that as it will be 6-7 months before the sofa is finally working again, due to their delays, I would like financial compensation for not being able to use the sofa for so long, and also a 6 month extension to our 5 year warranty. The original price of the sofa was £1500, and it was delivered in November 2022.

Do you think this is reasonable?  Should I ask for more?  Is there anything else I should do?
(I initially asked for a replacement sofa, but they said no as they can repair it. You don't ask, you don't get though!) 

Thanks for your help

CliveOfIndia

Compensation is going to be tricky.  It's not like you were unable to use the sofa, merely that some of the (arguably non-essential) functions stopped working.  To claim "compensation" you'd need to have suffered a quantifiable and provable financial loss.

You may well find they're willing to offer a token goodwill gesture, but I think compensation is going to be a bit of a long shot.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Did you buy from Guardsman OP?

If not the warranty is what the terms are and consumer rights are with the retailer, if you did by from Guardsman directly then you have both warranty and consumer rights with Guardsman.

Consumer rights don't offer the opportunity of "compensation" for a situation like but instead allow you to reject the sofa and receive a refund (which can be reduced to account for use, typically time owned vs lifespan, after 6 months since delivery). 

I assume the warranty doesn't offer compensation for delay (by all means it could but it would be pretty unusual)?

So really you are looking at rejecting if you don't want to wait or waiting, always happy to be corrected but I'm not sure of any damages that would be permitted for the loss of use whilst awaiting a repair, particularly as you instead have the right to reject and then buy a new sofa  

Jopo1

THe sofa is from DFS, the 5 year warranty is provided by Guardsman which is an insurer.
I suppose goodwill is the correct thing to ask for, not compensation.
Fortunately the unit broke while the sofa was in an upright position with the footrest in, otherwise it would be unusable and it would also affect the usage of the whole room as the footrest would be right in the way!

Alderbank

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

Did you buy from Guardsman OP?

Guardsman don't sell furniture.

They provide Furniture Protection Plans. https://guardsman.co.uk/

Some furniture shops try to upsell Guardsman plans to their customers, very much like some car dealers try to sell Diamondbrite paintwork protection to their customers.

PHK

As it would always have taken a while (the manufacturers lead time) for the parts to arrive,  you'd be reasonable to expect  distress and inconvenience payment for the time between the earliest point they could have ordered the repair parts to when they actually ordered them. 

So, you have what, 6 to 8 weeks extra delay. The FOS website gives an idea of the sort of payment you could expect. Somewhere between £100 to £300. From what you've said this would be towards the lower end. 

I don't think you'd get an extension of the insurance. It looks like these are fixed term, and there's nothing stopping you making another claim while this repair is going  on. So you'll get the full value of the insurance.