Manufacturers Guarantee

[Bernie2]

I was just wondering about guarantees.

On the European Continent manufacturers are made to give a 2 year guarantee. As most people know over here they tend to only give 12 months, which incidentally isn't true.

The Office of Fair Trading says depending on the product the guarantee is for a "reasonable expected product life time" which can mean anything.
Washing machine for instance should last according to OFT about 5 years.

But it seems if you get into a dispute after the 12 months is up, you have got to prove in court the product did not live up to its "expected product lifetime". Lets be honest how are you going to do that easily?

So 12 months guarantee in the UK it is.

But that it seems has now become out of date, for a guy won a case against Tescos involving guarantees. Apparently he asked them to repair a washing machine he had bought from them which was out of the 12 months guarantee period. They refused so he took them to court and won. The judge said "We are in Europe now, so the European 2 year guarantee holds"

Hmm!

Complicated isn't it?

Will Plumbers have to give 2 year guarantees on their work?

How will that affect pricing?

 

[Puddle]

Your quite right Bernie,there is a law that states if you manafactor something it has to be able to operate /carry out its function for "expected product lifetime"this used to be 7 years but now maybe 5
I found out about this when a mate installed a well know negative head pump in fulham
Really posh flats and after about 4 1/2 years one of the push fit couplings gave way and flooded the two flats below,well you can imagine the stink it caused
The insurance company came after him and they got a indepentant person to check it out and the faulty coupling was detected
They went back to the manufactorer and this law was sited and the manutactorer ( or there insurers) paid up
If it was a small claim,you could use the small claims court,anything bigger a insurance company will probably get involved to take up your (indirectly their ) cause
I give 2 years cover on my works even boilers that only have one year cover (unless make requested by client),if it goes wrong will repair if not covered by manufactorer and life time cover on workmanship
I would not recommend a boiler that i was sure would last 5 years without major problem
I have had it before were a gas valve went after about 2.1/2 years removed and sent to manufactorer with letter explaining siduation and recieved replacement valve