Consumer Rights Infringement
From Scratchpad
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Statutory consumer rights are the stuff of national state legislation, so your mileage may vary. Pour encourager les autres, here’s what known about the situation in the UK.
On Vincenzo Acinapura’s powerbook17lines.blogspot.com blog, tabu said...
- What they are doing is not legal in UK law!
- 30 November 2006 23:54:00 PST
On the Apple Discussions forum thread Re: Pink Vertical Line Has Suddenly appeared, Adam J Grant said...
- For all those in the UK, there may be hope to get it repaired by Apple free of charge even if you are out of warranty.
- We spoke to 'Which?' legal service who advised us on our rights and the sale of goods act which superceeds any warranty limitations.
- I spoke to Apple today, and after quoting the sale of goods act, where a product has to be fit for purpose, they agreed to pay for the repair as a 'special case'.
- You can make a claim up to 6 years after the date of purchase, but this depends on the nature of the fault. [...]
- I’m taking my laptop to a Apple service centre on Monday so fingers crossed!
- Posted: 05-Jan-2007 15:45
- source
Unfortunately, there’s no further world from Adam as to whether Apple did pay for his repair.
From my perusal of the UK Department of Trade and Industry’s Sale of Goods Act Quick Facts fact sheet:
- For up to six years after purchase (five years from discovery in Scotland) purchasers can demand damages (which a court would equate to the cost of a repair or replacement). AND
- A purchaser who is a consumer, i.e. is not buying in the course of a business, can alternatively request a repair or replacement. BUT
- In general, the onus is on all purchasers to prove the goods did not conform to contract (e.g. was inherently faulty) and should have reasonably lasted until this point in time.
In raising Apple’s obligations under the Sale of Goods Act during a phone conversation with a specialist at AppleCare UK, a Tier 2 specialist said, “It would be up to you to prove, at your expense, that the fault was there at the time of manufacturing. You would need to get independent verification of that.”
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I have had my ibook repaired as a special case. Unfortunately its broken again with the same fault since, more than 8 months after the first special case. I've now 'taken it on the chin' and resolved to buy applecare in the future!
I was able to get this repair simply because after complaining a lot I got a free diagnosis from their service dept. this outlined the problem was with the logic board. I happen to be an electronics engineer with a hell of a lot of experience with reliability of electronic circuits and components. I stated my accreditation, explained why it must have been a latent fault at time of purchase, and it clearly did not have the expected durability of such a product. I said I was willing to provide expert testimony from accredited experts.
I must however stress that none of this was easy, it must be proven that it was a problem at time of purchase. The SoGA is most definitely not a warranty replacement. I was simply lucky in that I know a lot about this sort of stuff and was willing to stand my ground. But speak to the CAB, speak politely but firmly to the place where you bought it, you don't really have anything to lose thats for sure. Most importantly get all your facts together.
