Advertised Manufacturer Warranty on 3rd Party Website Not Honoured

[D1111]

Hello, I'm hoping to garner opinions from you kind people before pursuing a complaint. Just over 14 months ago I bought a Hotpoint freezer. I bought it from AppliancesDirect.Com, and decided on it partly because it was one of the few then in stock, but also because it offered a 2 year labour + 10 year part warranty, according to the AppliancesDirect website. Last week the freezer stopped working so I contacted Hotpoint to be told it was out of warranty and I would have to pay for labour. Surely not, I argued, because it came with a 2 year labour warranty. Hotpoint insist that they only ever offer 1 year labour warranties, and so it must be a mistake on AppliancesDirect's part. So I contacted AppliancesDirect, who very helpfully said they rely on the details provided by the manufacturer when advertising goods. They then forwarded my complaint on to Hotpoint, who have simply sent a nameless email saying 'unfortunately your appliance is out of warranty. Contact us if you'd like to arrange a chargeable service visit '. Where do I go from here? Incidentally the product is still advertised on the AppliancesDirect.com website with a 2 year labour warranty.

Thanks in advance for any guidance

[R0b]

Hi

Take a screenshot or print out the page if the same information is currently being advertised, you may need that as evidence. You can also save that page using the Way Back Machine which stores a digital footprint of a web page at any given point in time and then refer back to it when you need to. The link is here: https://archive.org/web/.

As the product was sold by Applicances Direct, I would be pursuing them but it sounds like each are passing the buck. If you have exhausted all options then your last resort would be to start the legal process by sending a letter before action. To maximise your chances of success, you probably want to bring the claim against both Appliances Direct as the retailer who sold you the freezer and Hotpoint as the manufacturer giving the warranty. Then they can both fight amongst themselves as one of them has to be wrong. Either Appliances Direct has misrepresented the warranty in which case they are liable or Hotpoint is telling porkies in which case they're liable.

Before you decide on the above, you would need to understand the cost incurred in repairing the freezer. You could go to an independent authorised repair person or shop for Hotpoint and get it fixed, use that cost as the amount being claimed. Alternatively you could start legal proceedings and ask the court for an injunction to force either Appliances Direct or Hotpoint to fix the freezer but the cost of that claim may be more than the repair itself.

In a nutshell, before you send any letter before action you should have an idea of the cost of repair and list that out in your letter as the amount you would be claiming if none of them decide to actually do something about this. We can help you with that but yo;ll need to get the ball rolling yourself and do some prepartory work.

Or, if this is all too much hassle, you could do nothing and move on with your life.

[D1111]

Thanks for the detailed response, I'll follow up with Appliances Direct today after checking the repair costs and see where that gets me first. Great tip about the internet archive site as well.