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Re: How should i deal with this?
We have many examples of where prices have fallen dramatically such as in brown goods, computers and even cars but quality remains high. So as white goods prices have fallen you can forgive customers for not necessarily expecting quality should fall so drastically. Cars have never been so reliable and virtually never rust these days but they are cheaper than ever. Prices can fall considerably for many reasons but lower quality is only one of them.
If manufacturers and retailers together drive down prices out of competition by using various economies of scale and production techniques it shouldn’t automatically follow that customers should expect they should become less and less reliable as they get cheaper. They shouldn’t expect a Miele for an Indesit price but they should still expect a reasonable life. If taken to its logical conclusion in 10 years time they’ll be making washing machines with sealed lids and back, no serviceable parts inside and for £100 and you’ll be lucky to get 18 months from one.
Cheapness shouldn’t be an excuse for a product being so poor it doesn’t last a reasonable time. If making them that cheap means they often get scrapped just out of guarantee they’ve gone too far over the line and should accept products just aren’t viable below a certain price. The Sale of goods act is supposed to guard against rubbish products by making retailers responsible for some years after purchase but it doesn’t work because it’s too much hassle to enforce those rights in the face of big retailer stonewalling.
Imagine if you bought a fire extinguisher and it didn’t work properly after 2 years when your kitchen caught fire and the retailer said you only paid £10 for it what do you expect? Or a smoke alarm from Poundland that failed and people were killed in bed – but it was only a quid so they should have expected it to be crap. At the end of the day manufacturers have a duty to create products fit for purpose and to last a reasonable time, and selling them very cheaply is no excuse for creating junk.
The spares issue sounds bad, but all that will happen is that retailers will have to replace products instead of repairing them when they fail prematurely if there are no spares.
Re: How should i deal with this?
kwatt wrote:😉
By your argument then it would be reasonable to expect that a £30 vac from Tesco should last the same length of time or, going on for the same amount of time, as a Miele or a Sebo? Would you consider that to be a reasonable argument to make?
Same thing only different.
Is the £30 vac fit for the same purpose as a £200 Sebo?
Slow down K, you aren’t absorbing me points properly 🙂
What I said was –
“It’s obvious if a customer buys cheap they shouldn’t last anywhere near as long as if they buy at the top end.”
How do you get that I think a £30 vac should last as long as a Sebo from that?
I also added. “What I’m arguing is that cheap should still give reasonable service and last a reasonable time otherwise it’s totally unsustainable. other wise they are selling products not fit for purpose. “
So in your example it would be reasonable to expect the £30 vacuum to be noisy, not substantially built and need looking after carefully and not as efficient as a Sebo, nor have many features. It should still be capable of hoovering to a decent standard though and it should still last a reasonable time. When we get down to figures as low as £30 the game changes drastically. 2 or 3 years would be reasonable, some might even say just 1 year wouldn’t be bad at that price. When it comes to a big washing machine, that needs delivering and the old one disposing off, and spending £200 – £500 it’s a bit different from a £30 product.
Re: How should i deal with this?
kwatt wrote:I actually agree with a lot of what you’re saying Andy but I don’t think that consumers taking retailers to court is the answer. In fact, if anything, it’s probably counter productive.
A better answer would be for consumers to stop being so stupid and stop buying rubbish. We’ve both been championing that idea for 10 years or more.
But it’s large chain retailers and consumers that demand lower and lower prices, not the manufacturers. I don’t think it’s entirely fair to put all the blame on them and them alone.
Manufactures don’t determine what’s reasonable. Consumers do, they vote with their wallets.
I blame consumers equally, always have. I’m just batting in this particular way because this is the subject of the topic we are on. I might start a new topic entitled “Customers are naive and stupid and shouldn’t buy rubbish”. Many consumers can only afford cheapo rubbish though, it’s always been the case that poorer people buy budget washing machines. What’s the worst thing you could do to a poor person? Sell them a cheap washing machine that can’t be repaired and make them buy a new one every several years – or make them so scared of them being scrapped they pay out for expensive insurance which they can’t afford.
It would be kinder to make them pay £100 more and have a decent machine if lacking in features that at least would wash for them for a reasonable time and when it inevitably goes wrong let them be able to have it repaired at a reasonable price – not tell them it’s BER.
Someone should bring such a machine out 😉
Re: How should i deal with this?
That was the quickest response ever K, I only just posted my last reply and you replied a minute later but obviously you were writing it at the same time – we are on fire with this one 😉
I think you are making the mistake of letting your inside knowledge of the industry interfere with your objective thoughts. You are fully aware that cheap washing machines are built apparently with a specific lifespan in mind and therefore it’s not surprising to you that many of them suffer terminal failures especially under family use. But as I said in my last post I don’t think how long they are designed for is relevant from a consumer point of view.
At one time you were dead against any of these cheap washing machines and have like myself spent many years writing critical articles lambasting them and saying how they damage the environment etc. You’ve even built your ISE campaign around the condemnation of most modern washing machines becoming BER so young.
It’s obvious if a customer buys cheap they shouldn’t last anywhere near as long as if they buy at the top end. What I’m arguing is that cheap should still give reasonable service and last a reasonable time otherwise it’s totally unsustainable. other wise they are selling products not fit for purpose.
Your point about the laptop being mistreated is also a given. Few would argue with that but it’s not relevant to the argument to say ah but he wouldn’t be entitled to a replacement if he’d seriously mistreated it because it’s a given. If you try to say a woman with 3 or even 4 kids has mistreated her cheap washing machine because she used it to wash all their clothes that’s crazy to me because the entire point of a washing machine is to wash all the families clothes. If it can’t do it for more than 2 or 3 years it’s clearly not fit for the purpose it was sold.
Re: How should i deal with this?
Hi K,
I don’t think the average lifespan figures are relevant other than to show how poor most of them are these days, which strengthens not weakens my case. How long they are lasting and how long they are supposedly designed to last has nothing to do with whether they are lasting a reasonable time.
If you go on those figures you can start saying that as they are only lasting on average 7 years if one gets to 3.5 years it’s lasted half what it was expected to last. When the average figure gets down to only 5 years you can say if one lasted 6 years it’s been fantastic but 6 years is still crap. Also, you’d be able to say when one only lasts 4 years it’s done OK because it’s lasted 80{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of the average.
I contend that what is judged to be reasonable, by consumers and small claims courts, and consumer groups has, and should never have, anything to do with how long they are designed to last or how long the inadequately built products last on average.
Manufacturers shouldn’t be able to dictate what is reasonable. They shouldn’t be able to design something for an inadequate period of life in order to sell cheap to the masses and then claim it’s reasonable that they only last 2 or 3 years. We decide what’s reasonable as do consumer groups and the small claims court.
I know there’s variance on expectations, which I acknowledged in my first post but even if washing for 4 kids a woman has the right to expect that her brand new washing machine should be able to manage that task for more than 3 years even if it was cheap. If products are in the marketplace designed to do a specific job and they are cheap they should still last a reasonable time.
If people refused to accept washing machines can need scrapping so young retailers would have so many claims they would stop selling rubbish washing machines. Washing machines would have to increase in quality or they wouldn’t have a market.
I don’t think a product has to last a specific time, just a reasonable time, I just think 5 years minimum life for a large domestic appliance is not asking for much. Not 5 years trouble free, just 5 years without becoming BER. If they can’t make them last that long they have no business littering our planet with them.
Re: How should i deal with this?
There’s wishful thinking in some of these interpretations. There’s plenty of people successfully sued for compensation for drum bearings failing under 5 years and other failures. A guy recently posted he got a brand new HP laptop after his failed after 3 years and 3 months.
It doesn’t matter how long a product is designed for, what counts is if it lasted a reasonable time or not. If a claim’s made at 3 years how can it be a good excuse for the manufacturer to say ah well we only designed it to last for 2 years? They can design them to last as little or as long as they like but if they go BER in an “unreasonable time” you can still take them to small claims court because they haven’t lasted a reasonable time.
Since when did it become reasonable for washing machines to be complete scrap after 2 – 5 years?
If you could go back in time K and tell yourself that you would be arguing it’s perfectly reasonable for a washing machine to be complete scrap after 2 or 3 years I doubt you’d believe yourself. That acceptance goes against everything you once stood for. 🙂
Re: How should i deal with this?
kwatt wrote:It’s not as clear as that Andy..
That’s a fact, and it’s not as clear as your original post implied either. 🙂
You also have to consider that, like any other mechanical device or even most consumer electronics, that whilst they may be designed to last X,000 hours or X,000 cycles that faults can and do occur. There is, in effect, no guarantee of durability..
I agree the SOGA doesn’t cover any breakdown, some of which are acceptable if used heavily, but a washing machine does a tough job and is subject to lots of stresses and strains, so it should be created to deal easily with those strains.
If products are created so that they can’t really cope with normal usage for at least 5 or 6 years it’s not fit for purpose IMO. A brand new product of any description, properly designed and properly built simply should not break down with major faults in its first few years. If anything is properly made how can it fail after 2 or 3 years? You can’t say ah, well customer x flogged it to death because they have 4 kids and 2 adults because people do have 4 kids and 2 adults, some have 2 or 3 kids. That’s what a washer should be designed to deal with. you shouldn’t design washing machines that only cope with washing for a couple, or a couple with just 1 kid.
It wasn’t so bad in the old days, people would just accept it was out of guarantee and have it repaired, what’s different these days is that products are not repairable in many cases and rendered BER within the 6 year period. I don’t think it’s acceptable for even a cheap washing machine to be BER within 6 years without exceptional circumstances.
Products are being created that don’t last past the sale of goods act’s 6 year period which was created when products were more expensive and lasted longer and were properly repairable. These products shouldn’t be economically viable to exist because every time they went BER after 2, 3 or 4 or 5 years customers should claim compensation under the SOGA but they don’t so the status quo continues.
If your car gets to three years old and it needs a new engine or ECU which would likely cost a good proportion of the value of the car they don’t give you a new one. In fact, the chances of even being offered a partial refund unless you were almost killed by it are, at best, remote.
The same consumer legislation applies, it is no different.
The car industry is no different to the washing machine industry in ignoring their SOGA obligations. If the car has been looked after and not done excessive mileage the customer should be able to claim compensation from the seller under the SOGA. They won’t get a new car, just like you wouldn’t get a new washing machine, but they should be entitled to compensation to cover the cost of the repair if a judge agrees it hasn’t lasted a reasonable time.
Therefore, even a major failure is not covered by the six year rule unless, as I said, you can categorically prove that it was an inherent fault that had been there from new. A seal wear, brushes wearing down, bearings wearing would not give anyone the right to an automatic replacement by any stretch.
You seem to be focussing on only one aspect of the act K. When a product fails shortly after purchase and the ability to reject it. The act also says it should last a reasonable time. I would never agree they shouldn’t ever break down within the 6 years, but any breakdown that renders it BER means the product has not lasted a reasonable time to me.
You paid £200 for the whatever brand so you can “reasonably” expect about 2 years or so and, in any event, that again does not guarantee that the goods will be fault free in that period.
Why should customers expect that just because they only paid £200 for a washing machine it should be obvious it’s a bunch of crap that won’t last very long? If they can’t produce a washing machine that lasts a reasonable time for £200 – £300 surely it shouldn’t even exist? The fact it exists and there are plenty in the shops means manufacturers and retailers are endorsing it as a viable purchase for families. If this is not the case they shouldn’t be being sold. If people asserted their rights under the SOGA they would disappear within several years because retailers would stop selling them.
The problem here isn’t the law, it’s brilliant. In fact it’s way ahead of most Western countries, the problem here is that people expect a Rolls Royce for Mini money.
K.
There’s definitely different expectations between a high quality product and a cheap one but most people would say a minimum of 5 years life from a cheap washer is acceptable. if they didn’t no one would buy cheap washers if it was a given that they will only last a few years. The SOGA is supposed to stop crap products being sold.
Re: How should i deal with this?
kwatt wrote:
Not so clear cut.
You are liable for up to six years only if the defect can be PROVED to have been there since point of sale after the goods are over six months old by the customer. Under six months the retailer has to prove that the defect was not there.
The “not of merchantable quality” argument is a red herring. It does not count after the goods have been in use for any length of time, ie, more than a few days… not weeks or months.
K.
If the drum bearings fail because the seal lets water in after a few years of normal use it’s pretty clear the machine was faulty from the start in that it had an inerrant fault.
If the bearings, motor or timer fail after 2 years and it’s rendered beyond economical repair it’s pretty clear the machine hasn’t lasted a reasonable time.
All factors have to be taken into account such as purchase price and how the machine’s been used, but it’s perfectly possible to claim compensation under sale of goods act up to 6 years after purchase depending on the fault.
It would be debatable how long a cheap Beko “should” last, but if you bought a Miele for example and paid £700 for it and it suffered a major fault after 5 years I’d put my money on winning in the small claims court saying it hadn’t lasted a reasonable time because most people would think it unreasonable to invest £700 in a high quality product and have it break down at 5 years needing (say) £500 of repairs..
According to the sale of goods act the phrase “reasonable time” means what most people would consider reasonable.
Re: repairmanacademy.com
What’s with all these people thinking it’s easy money to just pass jobs onto repairmen and take a cut?
Re: What’s happend to the specialist?
In the old days you could survive only fixing one make of front loader but even now if a repairer specialised in only repairing Hoover Candy appliances, or only Hotpoint, Creda and Indesit white goods – or even only all makes of automatic washing machine they could surely have enough work. There are millions of them. They would also take a lot of work from the engineers trying to fix everything because as stupid as many customers are they would virtually all rather have a specialist given a choice.
Our local doctors are general practitioners who know a little about a lot, but commonly misdiagnose things and have to send people to specialists all the time. Everyone knows if you have a heart problem you are better off with a heart specialist than a general practitioner.
Are you trying to say that no one could survive fixing just refrigeration and not touching anything else? Or only front loaders – where virtually every house in the country has one? Or only on one of the big manufacturing groups millions of appliances?
The argument that a washer is a washer and a fridge is a fridge is irrelevant. I’m not saying really good engineers aren’t capable of fixing any specific appliance, I’m saying a company or engineer specialising exclusively in a smaller range of appliances is going to give a far better service than an equally good one trying to fix them all, and that customers are pretty likely to favour a specialist when deciding who to call.
Re: 0800 Repair
Martin wrote:.. just to reiterate my previous post if I may,
whenever something new comes along that has even the remotest association with the trade be it widgets, washers or work providers, as often as not the knives are out. For whatever reason someone has something to say on the subject and for the most part the result is negative. I cite THE REASON WASHING MACHINE and BRITISH GAS as an example.
So, for my part in this it’s just an observation, just an observation, nothing more, nothing sinister, no harmful intent, nothing OK. 🙂
You make it sound like you’re observing something remarkable Martin, when in fact you are only observing normal human nature – the same all over the world, and in every trade.
People already active in a particular trade not welcoming with open arms another company competing with them? And you are surprised?
Personally I’m all for any company new or old providing a high standard of service to customers as I can maybe do business with them by helping promote them. As I said before though, I’m personally sceptical about how anyone can pull it off with the way things are in the repair business these last 10 – 20 years, but if they can – great 🙂
Re: 0800 Repair
Martin wrote:……go on guys…get your teeth in…go on do!!! I’m lovin’ it.:twisted:
Don’t know if you’re including me or not. I’ve posted one criticism only regarding the very annoying forced playing of a video with no method of stopping it each and every time you go to the home page, which I find crass. I would criticise that on any site that did it and I’m pretty sure it’s very rare for any professional web site to do that.
Re: 0800 Repair
Alex wrote:
I think the DASA connection may be a bit tenuous as I guess they have utilised associate membership via a sister operation?Alex
Consumers will understand from the section in the faqs answering yes to the “are we members of a trade association?” to mean that they will be operating bound by the DASA Code of Practice. If they are, then fair enough.
