John Lewis refusing Apple Watch ECG repair within their 2 year guarantee

smsh

hey there,
any help on this would be appreciated.

I have an Apple Watch I bought 1 year 11 month ago from John Lewis. ECG stopped working on it suddenly. Calling their technical support line, we went through all possible troubleshooting, including software updates, resetting-and-pairing the Watch back etc, nothing helped. Afterwards they were "oh, according to our internal guidelines, you should contact Apple for ECG issues as this is a software issue" and gave me a phone number to Apple.
I've contacted Apple, went through all troubleshooting steps again, uploaded logs to them. Waited for the callback from them and they said "ok, the Watch needs service, this is not a software issue" however as the Watch was bought not from Apple, they're not providing second year service as per Consumer Law and they referred me to contact John Lewis with this.

This is where things got tricky. John Lewis disregards what Apple says, saying "according to our internal guidelines, any ECG issues are software issues and you should contact Apple about this. Our guarantee doesn't cover software issues". Arguing that the manufacturer knows better if it's a software issue or not didn't yield any result, speaking with the shift supervisor didn't change absolute nothing, they're adamant this is a software issue and their guarantee doesn't cover that.

How do you deal with something like this? Is it even legal to have some "internal guidelines" they won't show and refuse the service they promised?

Ergates

Inform then you are requesting repair or replacement under your consumer rights, rather than any guarantee they offer (warrantees and guarantees sit over and above your consumer rights and cannot replace them).

screech_78

Guarantees are allowed to exclude software issues if they want to. There’s no legal right to any guarantee at all. 

You’d need to make a claim under your consumer rights, however as you’ve owned the watch for more than 6 months you’re going to need a report stating it’s a manufacturing fault. Apple won’t put that in writing though. 

smsh

Spoke to Apple again (as they're kind enough to check in even though I'm not repairing it with them) and they actually provided me a statement in writing saying that after troubleshooting the issue over the phone, the Watch determined to have a hardware issue. Haven't called JL yet, curious what would be the best course of action with them