Not honouring warranty - what next?

roseview

We bought a conservatory which came with a 10 year warranty (albeit we never received the actually warranty paperwork - it's detailed in the T&C). Last year, the self cleaning glass coating started to fail so we went back to the company concerned.

It's taken 8 months of repeated calls, emails and some visits from them etc and the latest (despite having admitted that there was an issue!) is that there's nothing wrong with the coating at all. Totally ridiculous.

Citizens advice aren't much use, although they've passed it on to Trading Standards. They mentioned about the Limitations Act (1980), saying that as we paid more than 6 years ago, it could be difficult to pursue the trader for a solution to your issue. This seems to make a mockery of a 10 year warranty.

Any suggestions as to what we could do next? Don't want to waste money on a court claim if it's going to get thrown out due to the 6 year ruling.

DE_612183

If the glass only failed last year - it's not six years it's 1.

What is the rectification - full replacement or just repair?

born_again

Warranty is separate to your consumer rights.
Does the warranty cover the glass? As that will have been supplied by a 3rd party & may have it's own conditions.

TELLIT01

When was the conservatory actually built? 

Alderbank

There are two potential claims:

1. The glass did not conform to contract when it was delivered. That claim, against the conservatory company, seems to be time barred now.
2. The warranty supplier has breached the contract by failing to issue a remedy when a valid claim is made. This 10 year contract would not be breached until you actually made a valid claim and they failed to comply with their obligations under the contract, so would be quite recent and well within date.

Who is the warranty contract with and what exactly does it say?

Is it Pilkingtons?

If so, the T&Cs of Pilkington Activ™ Self-Cleaning Glass warrants that, with proper handling and maintenance, the Pilkington applied coating on each of its above named coated glass building products will not peel under normal

conditions for a period of ten (10) years from the date of original factory shipment.

The T&Cs require that such claim is made in writing and is received by Pilkington within thirty (30) days of the Discovery Date (as defined below). The Discovery Date is defined as the earlier of the date that an alleged defect is actually discovered or the date when such alleged defect should have been discovered (in Pilkington’s sole opinion),

and such alleged defect, has been confirmed as a defect on examination and/or laboratory analysis by a

qualified representative from Pilkington (in Pilkington’s sole opinion).

Have you met the above terms? If not, there has been no breach so nothing to claim from the warranty unless you can successfully argue that any term not complied with is unfair, in the legal meaning of 'unfair'. For example, Pilkington's sole opinion sounds a bit one-sided to me.

DullGreyGuy

DE_612183 said:

If the glass only failed last year - it's not six years it's 1.

What is the rectification - full replacement or just repair?

No, because the argument is that it was defective on the date of delivery and hence the contract was breached on the date of supply not the date of failure. 

There is the concept of latent defects, ones that were there at point of sale but didnt come to light until much later which gives 3 years from when a reasonable person would have realised the problem with a long stop of 15 years however under English law I've only ever seen it in connection with construction/property (as in buildings) rather than broader goods. 

Okell

roseview said:

... Citizens advice aren't much use, although they've passed it on to Trading Standards. They mentioned about the Limitations Act (1980), saying that as we paid more than 6 years ago, it could be difficult to pursue the trader for a solution to your issue. This seems to make a mockery of a 10 year warranty...

I think Citizen's Advice are (obviously?) wrong here.

If you were claiming against the installer/trader under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 then you would have no claim after 6 years.

However, if you are claiming under a 10 year warranty and you are still within 10 years then you should have a good claim - assuming the warranty covers this type of failure.

If you are satisfied that it is covered then you need to argue it out with whoever provided the guarantee and, if necessary, sue them

roseview

The T&C on the sale order paperwork clearly states that glass is covered, and that there is a warranty for 10 years. However, the issue we have is that the supplier of the conservatory (and therefore the glass in it) is refusing to engage with us at all. It's been inspected by his workforce, they even rubbed more holes in the coating when they were here, then he claimed he was speaking to Pilkingtons, then he claimed that we'd told him we'd cleaned it with brushes and solvents (we most certainly didn't since we haven't!) and then finally he claimed that the glass in in great condition with no damage at all

.

Alderbank

As far as the warranty is concerned, it doesn't matter what the installers' workforce think. Don't let them sidetrack you.

What matters is whether the alleged defect has been confirmed as a defect on examination and/or laboratory analysis by a qualified representative from Pilkington.

What have Pilks said about warranty compliance? It's NSG (Pilks' current owners) who will be paying out under the warranty and who you need to convince, not anyone else.

DullGreyGuy

Okell said:

roseview said:

... Citizens advice aren't much use, although they've passed it on to Trading Standards. They mentioned about the Limitations Act (1980), saying that as we paid more than 6 years ago, it could be difficult to pursue the trader for a solution to your issue. This seems to make a mockery of a 10 year warranty...

I think Citizen's Advice are (obviously?) wrong here.

If you were claiming against the installer/trader under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 then you would have no claim after 6 years.

However, if you are claiming under a 10 year warranty and you are still within 10 years then you should have a good claim - assuming the warranty covers this type of failure.

If you are satisfied that it is covered then you need to argue it out with whoever provided the guarantee and, if necessary, sue them

Assuming the Latent Defects Act does only apply to buildings, then I'd say they are incomplete rather than wrong. 

As the seller of goods and those goods being shown to be defective at a later date does become statute barred at 6 years because the defect and therefore breach is considered to have existed at the point of supply which was over 6 years ago. 

These however came with a 10 year warranty, the fact that the windows were faulty isnt a breach of the warranty however if the warranty fails to respond when a legitimate claim is made under it thats the time that a breach of the warranty occurs and the 6 year clock would start ticking on a claim of a breach of the warranty. 

The question in my mind however is, who is the liable party if it's a manufacturers warranty? Under English law is there actually a contract formed between the manufacturer and consumer given the consideration was paid to the retailer rather than the manufacturer; similarly is it the retailer thats liable for the warranty in a similar way that they are liable for defective physical products 

roseview

Pilkington won't discuss it with us as they say that they supply on a B2B basis so it's upto the company we had the conservatory from which makes sense.