Freezer broken just out of guarantee period

ianrobert · 11 September 2018 at 12:45PM

Hi, always looked on here for advice but this is the first time I’ve posted so go easy please!

Bought a Hotpoint freezer from Hughes.co.uk in July 2017, which broke down last week - the red high temperature light came on and the freezer has totally defrosted. I’ve owned the product for exactly 1 year and 5 weeks, typical when you’ve just got the basic 1 year guarantee.

I’ve contacted Hughes (mentioning that I knew about the Consumer Rights Act) who told me to contact Hotpoint, basically they didn’t want anything to do with it. Phoned Hotpoint who wanted £120 to send one of their own engineers out, if the product had a fault they would pay for it, if the breakdown was my own fault then I’d have to pay for it. Wasn’t particularly happy with this scenario as I thought it was totally open to abuse on Hotpoint’s side even though they said “it’s not within their interests to manipulate reports” - something which I totally disagree with. I left it at that saying I would seek advice.

After reading up on the subject it appears that it’s the retailer’s responsibility to either fix the product, offer a replacement or refund the customer. I then phoned Hughes back and queried this with them and they once again told me to phone Hotpoint, get an engineer out at a cost of “only £120” and they would honour the outcome of his report. If the report said there was a fault with the product they would refund me the 80% of the £120 engineers fee. I’ve emailed back sticking to my guns and saying that it’s up to them to sort an engineer or I can get an independent one to do a report. Basically I’m very wary of a Hotpoint member of staff coming to view the product as I doubt very much they’ll rule against their employers.

Basically I was wanting to ask the following:

Am I right on insisting it’s up to Hughes and not Hotpoint to sort the problem as my consumer rights are with them?
Are Hughes/Hotpoint entitled to say a Hotpoint member of staff must do the inspection and report?
Are Hughes entitled to only pay out 80% of the engineers fee if the report rules in my favour?

Thanks in advance...

unholyangel · 11 September 2018 at 4:35PM

After 6 months, the onus is on the consumer to prove the goods are inherently faulty, this is usually done via independent report. If the report finds in your favour then you'd be entitled to reasonable damages you incurred as a result of the breach of contract (such as the report fee) but you do have a duty to take reasonable steps to keep those losses to a minimum and not to take unreasonable steps to increase them.

So they can't insist on it being hotpoint and they should be covering the whole fee if the report finds in your favour

Mr_Singleton · 11 September 2018 at 4:47PM

ianrobert wrote: »

I’ve owned the product for exactly 1 year and 5 weeks.

Absolutely no idea on what you should do but can’t get out of my head that a group of Hotpoint employees are currently running around high fiving each other shouting 5 weeks!

That ‘cheap’ deal doesn’t look so cheap any more hey!

Anyway good luck

newatc · 11 September 2018 at 8:03PM

I would curse my bad luck, cut my losses and buy a new freezer (different make) as repairing such items can be expensive with no guarantee that there will not be further problems. Our current freezer is nearly 40 years old and we've not had a problem or needed to buy a new one but for all other kitchen/laundry electrical items we buy the cheapest that will do the job and are prepared to replace when they go wrong (unless we can find and cure the problem ourselves which doesn't happen often!).

Deastons · 11 September 2018 at 8:11PM

This is why buying makes like Miele are so worth it. My freezer cost about £500 but it's over 10yrs old now. Never had the slightest problem.

Buy cheap, buy twice.

SnowTiger · 11 September 2018 at 9:36PM

Deastons wrote: »

This is why buying makes like Miele are so worth it. My freezer cost about £500 but it's over 10yrs old now. Never had the slightest problem.

Buy cheap, buy twice.

Mostly bad reviews on Trustpilot: https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.miele.co.uk. I do take most of what I read on Trustpilot with a pinch of salt though.

Customer service seems to be the biggest gripe.

macman · 11 September 2018 at 10:14PM

Hang on a mo. Even though it's out of the manufacturer's 12m warranty, Hotpoint have offered to pay for the repair unless it proves to be a user-inflicted fault. Given that it's quite difficult to break a freezer, short of dropping it on it's side, I'd be grabbing their offer without delay, even if it involves paying the £120 call out fee upfront.
User inflicted damage would be physical damage of the kind that is visible, so not difficult to differentiate from an inherent parts failure.
Next time, buy from JL and get a 2 year warranty-or buy a decent brand instead.

George_Michael · 11 September 2018 at 10:32PM

macman wrote: »

User inflicted damage would be physical damage of the kind that is visible, so not difficult to differentiate from an inherent parts failure.

User inflicted damage would include visible physical damage but isn't limited to that.

Not ensuring that there is enough space around the back of the freezer to allow for airflow can easily cause premature failure of the compressor.

macman · 11 September 2018 at 10:36PM

Quite true, but given that the engineer will be inspecting an empty freezer, they would not be able to ascertain the actual cause of compressor failure-only that it had failed. The other most likely fault here is a faulty thermostat, which again would be difficult to blame on the user.

deanos · 15 September 2018 at 6:07PM

I would be careful what Hotpoint are saying, Hotpoint come with a 5 years parts guarantee but you have to pay the callout fee and get the parts for free, sounds like that's what they have quoted

Freezer broken just out of guarantee period

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