Brief cases: refund for hob fitting failure

These are the topics which I suspect many find the most useful of all. Almost all the queries posted in W? Cs concern legalities, and as far as I’m aware none of us is a lawyer. It would be extremely helpful if we could have more of these topics with examples covering a wide range of circumstances.

Thanks to W? Legal for the topic.

We did, in fact, have a similar situation with a kitchen fitting company. It was a major installation: complete removal and disposal of old kitchen, fit of brand new and good sized new kitchen.

They agreed to start on a given date in October; the date was important as we’d booked a holiday for two weeks after installation. Two days prior to the expected arrival of the fitter I received a call from a company to tell us the fitter had hurt his hand and wouldn’t be able to start on the date agreed.

Now, this is where things became interesting. Our contract to supply and fit the kitchen was with company A. However, company A subcontracted the fitting to Company B. Company B, meanwhile, in turn subcontracted the actual work to company C. It was the company C person whose hand was the issue and it was Company B who was making the call.

Based on a lot of experience with W? legal services and almost 50 years of reading W?, I remained icily calm and simply explained that Breach of Contract was quite a serious matter and asked the caller from company B which replacement company they would be sending along. Following a lengthy pause, in a slightly unsteady voice company B rep told us they’d try to find another company.

After an hour, the ‘phone rang again and the company B rep explained that they weren’t able to find another team. Still remaining glacially calm I then asked her what she proposed. She did seem to be near to tears, and eventually offered to do any extra electrical work that might be necessary for nothing (we’d anticipated around £500 for that). She was also able to get Company C to do the job the following week.

Stressing the criticality of the revised date I agreed to a schedule change (I considered finding my own fitter but with only two days to the promised date that seemed infeasible), accepted the promise of the free electrical work and explained I’d also be contacting company A.

I then contacted company A, explained what had happened, stressed the breach of contract aspect and asked them to suggest reasonable compensation. I was passed up to the person i./c kitchens, who asked me what I expected. I responded that I expected them to make an offer; it wasn’t for me to take the first step.

They went away, consulted and came back with a 10% reduction on the entire kitchen cost as an offer, That I accepted and Company C arrived, three days later.

It took more than two weeks to fit the entire kitchen, and the fitters had to return after we came back from holiday. But we got an excellent job, were better off by roughly £1500 as a consequence of them having to vary the contract and everyone was happy. I think.

I’ve posted this in the Newsroom but perhaps it should also fit here?
https://press.which.co.uk/whichpressreleases/hidden-faults-affecting-some-of-britains-most-popular-cars-revealed-by-which-research/

This research, if robust, seems to exemplify the need to support claims under the “durability” clause of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and the Sale of Goods Act, its predecessor. The usual criticism of applying a “durability” claim is the lack of evidence to show what a reasonable fault fee life should be. Well, the following example is typical of Which?’s findings and seems to me to demonstrate quite clearly that the battery is not durable. In that case, if it happens outside warranty, a consumer rights claim should be pursued. The evidence is there to support it.
”Nissan’s Qashqai (2014-) model, one of the best-selling cars in the UK, had the highest breakdown rate of all cars surveyed, with a fifth (20%) of owners needing to replace their battery in the last year – four to five times the average rate for cars of the same age.”

Similar cases are revealed for Tesla door handles, locks, fuel caps and boot; Seat Alhambra exhaust; Ford B-Max automatic transmission; BMW 5 series suspension. These exceptional failures to the norm seem exactly the kind of data that we – and the courts – need, to pursue durability claims.

It would be appropriate if, as well as looking at cars in this way (” survey of nearly 44,000 members of the public covering more than 52,000 cars”, Which? also applied this effort to owners of major domestic appliances (as a start).

It is of little use just publishing this information, however. It needs to be made use of. So, will Which? promote the concept of “durability”, back it with more data and support durability claims based on their research findings?