How long have you waited for an appliance to be repaired?

If you buy from a shop or retailer who knows you as a name not just an account number they will want you to go again and buy something else or get a new appliance when it needs replacing and they will give you the best service they can, this applies to anything you buy

Some years ago my TV developed an intermittent fault when it was between two and three years old. Most of the time it would work fine but sometimes the screen flickered a few times and the picture disappeared, leaving the sound working. I thought about pursuing a claim against the retailer under the Sale of Goods Act but I had bought the TV online and had disposed of the packaging not long before the fault appeared.

Having repaired TVs and other household electronics goods when I was younger I decided to have a go at fixing what showed the symptoms of a ‘dry joint’. I was unsuccessful and since I had worked on the TV, I could not send it back.

With some difficulty I managed to find a shop that offered TV repairs. When I heard nothing I chased the shop a couple of times and eventually went to collect the TV and a large bill, which I paid. The fault soon came back and I found that they had not replaced the part shown on the invoice. (It is very easy to see whether parts have been replaced if soldering is required.) I took the TV back to the repairer and they said they had not managed to find a fault and that the charge was ‘a mistake’. I let them have another two attempts at repairing the TV and each time I phoned, the engineer was not available or they could not find the fault. Eventually I collected the unrepaired TV and asked for my money back, which they refused to do, claiming to have spent a long time on the job. When I said I would go to Trading Standards, a cheque for the amount I had paid, less the £30 inspection fee. arrived in the post, with no covering letter. I had been without the TV for a total of nine months.

Trading Standards told me that they would take no action unless they had other reports. On the few occasions when I have had dealings with Trading Standards they have taken no action. I should have taken legal action over being charged for a part that had not been replaced.

I have started to look for goods that come with a long warranty, either included in the price or for little extra cost. I have never regretted refusing expensive extended warranties.

The pertinent question is in para 4 of the Intro : “how long is it reasonable to wait?”. This begs the question whether the time should include weekends and bank holidays.

When goods are under warranty, so the repair is within the retailer’s responsibility, it might be argued – based on the anecdotal evidence reported in the Intro – that it is a grudge job that they don’t exactly stir themselves to attend to pronto. For a boiler or a fridge or freezer I would say it needs to be fixed within two working days of the problem being reported. For other appliances I would say a maximum of five working days as the outside limit of a reasonable response and normally, unless a special part or repair technique is required, it should be within three working days – if it’s a question of difficulty then a replacement product should be installed. Each household will have a different degree of urgency. Many would struggle without a working washing machine for more than a couple of days so the issue of whether a weekend is included in the timescale could be critical. I suspect that repair back-up for warrantied goods is one of those areas of commerce that has been quietly degraded over recent years with support logistics being thinned out and dispersed so that response times become elongated. In this situation it would make sense for a stock of temporary replacement products to be held which can be rapidly delivered to the customer. That is alright for free-standing appliances and possibly for washing machines and dishwashers if the customer can make the hose connexions but it would be no use in the case of boiler breakdowns; there is also the risk that firms that had supplied a substandard temporary replacement would not expedite the full corrective action to the faulty appliance.

Although boilers are referred to in the Intro, no further mention is made. In most cases boilers are installed by central heating engineering companies that have a seven-days-a-week emergency call-out service, and it is unwise to buy a new boiler from a firm that does not have that degree of back-up. If it is outside the warranty period it is still important to have it serviced regularly and the service company would probably be the first point of call in an emergency.

What I think would be useful would be a provision that where there is an unreasonable delay in fixing an appliance that is ‘critical to the household’s basic needs’ the purchaser has the right, after giving [say, six hours’] notice by telephone or e-mail after a logged repair has gone past the ‘reasonable’ timescale, to arrange an independent repair and recharge the cost and any losses [e.g. spoiled laundry, wasted frozen food] to the retailer concerned.

With goods out of warranty it will depend on the understanding between the customer and the repairer as to how long it will take to restore the appliance to working condition. In this case it is advisable to make time the essence of the contract by specifying a time limit but it would be very difficult to obtain financial redress if this was not honoured, and, since the contractual relationship would have broken down by that point, it might be injudicious to expect a trouble-free repair process anyway. Since the repair is no longer within the responsibility of the retailer or manufacturer customers are free to contract the work to any independent company in their locality that is competent and resourced for that type and model of appliance. Since consumers’ contact with such firms is usually under distress people would not necessarily know the form of the various operators listed in the local papers or the on-line lists so it is not easy to make a good choice and several phone calls might be required. The Which? Trusted Trader website or local authority equivalent might be a good place to start looking. If one firm is substituted for another it is essential to notify the first firm that their service is no longer required, give the reason for the withdrawal, and confirm that the contractual disengagement is without penalty.