Last week, Consumer Court received a complaint from a
customer regarding a fridge she had purchased from a furniture store but it had
started giving problems within a month of purchase. She found herself in a
situation where the retailer disclaimed any responsibility on a product sold as
“the manufacturer is responsible for defects in materials or workmanship”. The
consumer (rightly) complained that she paid the retailer and not the
manufacturer, but did not receive the help she hoped.
A follow-up was made with the furniture retailer as well as
the manufacturer’s representative, but no reply was received by the time of
this column. This week, I would like to explain what a warranty is, and when is
a consumer able to find redress.
According to the dictionary, “a warranty is a guarantee
given to the purchaser by a company stating that a product is reliable and free
from known defects and that the seller will, without charge, repair or replace
defective parts within a given time limit and under certain conditions.” In
layman’s terms, a consumer expects to have a replacement of a product that is
not working as expected.
However, we first have to look at the legal aspect of a
warranty. Generally speaking, a warranty forms part of a contract between the
buyer and the seller. In this specific case though, it is a product guarantee,
meaning that the manufacturer makes the warranty to the consumer EVEN THOUGH
the manufacturer and consumer have no direct contractual relationship.
And this is when the problems starts.
The furniture store (and most appliance retailers) state on
their contract with the consumer that they only sell the goods and do not
accept responsibility for any Defects in
Materials and Workmanship. This simply promises that the manufacturer
properly constructed the product, out of proper materials and further implies
that the product will work as products of that type are expected to work.
Manufacturers have become very clever in their language and
often provide a time limit warranty rather than a performance warranty. In
other words, this manufacturer has a 2 year warranty from the date of purchase
during which the consumer must prove that the fridge was defective when
manufactured. If however, the fridge stops working in the 25 month after
purchase (I have owned a fridge for over ten years), the consumer cannot claim
on the warranty.
The problem for our complaining consumer though is that this
is not helping her to get a fridge that works. The only way she could enforce
the contract is if she hires a lawyer (at a very high cost) and makes a civil
case against the manufacturer. Even then, the customer might still lose, or not
be able to afford the lawyer after winning.
This is why there is need for a Consumer Protection Act, or
at the very least, a Consumer Ombudsman that can assist consumers in having
these type of problems addressed.
On the funny side, I visited the website of the manufacturer
and tried to find out about their promised “for service on appliances still
under the 2 year warranty” but could find no mention of it on the written pages
of the website. Having a bit of IT background I was able to access the website
code (which is what search engines do) and was able to find a hidden block of
text claiming that customers can “Contact our After Sales Centres for service
on appliances still under the 2 year warranty” and giving the times, centres
and telephone numbers to contact. Just a pity that an ordinary consumer
clicking on the site will never see this information.
