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The grey area of consumer rights is, it could be argued, muddied
further by product warranties. This is the line you’ll get from trading standards’
officers, for whom the bottom line is simple: everything you buy should be of satisfactory
quality. If it isn’t, you are entitled to your money back and have recourse to law.
Warranties, with their time periods, lists of things they do and don’t cover, stipulations
of use, and often a whole bunch of other stuff, seem to complicate the issue of,
and may attempt to diminish, statutory rights. The weasely word in all this is ‘satisfactory’.
In the case of mountain biking, the product has to be able to be used satisfactorily
for the aforementioned leisure pursuit. Whether your mountain biking is the same
as the next man’s is often the definition discrepancy which cowboy dealers use to
try to duck responsibility and chancer punters use to pull a fast one. However, this
doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take some notice of a warranty just because it’s not worth
the paper it’s printed on.
Your contract is with the shop and it is they who are responsible for dealing with
your problems, so go there first. (If you buy a problem part mail order it’s trickier
but still applicable.) So how do you proceed if you think you have a faulty or defective
part? First, don’t steam in threatening the law as you’ll put noses out of joint
and that’s counterproductive. Even if you are mightily pissed off, be reasonable.
If you have genuine complaint, think about what you want (refund, repair or replace)
and prepare your speech accordingly. At this time, you are relying on the retailer
wanting to retain your custom so it helps not to give the impression you think they
are shysters of the highest order. Clearly they aren’t going to be falling over themselves
to give you your money back, and mending or replacing will be their likely course
of action. Only press for repayment if you’ve lost confidence in the product entirely
and are willing never to darken their doors again.
If you can’t get any joy from the shop, you may see fit to go mad on their shop floor.
Bear in mind though the importer/distributor operates the warranty scheme and they
may value your continued custom more than a shop. So hold off the tantrums for bit
– if you can use the shop to negotiate the warrantee deal on your behalf, so much
the better. If this is not the case and you end up contacting the importer yourself,
stay calm and be assertive, not aggressive. Polite letters to a company establishing
your riding pedigree, saying how much you like their product, enjoyed using it, very
much want to keep using till you are old and dead, etc, have an effect. So too does
a little humour. Photographs of the offending twig, lump or crack in pavement are
less useful. Note: if, for example, a catalogue shows a bike being jumped and you
broke yours doing much the same thing, the company is in a weak position even if
their warranty expressly excludes this. You will soon see benefits, perhaps in the
form of expiry periods being mysteriously extended, upgrade replacement policies
being introduced and more, all because they want you to keep using their product
and you were a smart warrantee claimant. Tell your friends what nice people they
are at company X and the commercial world keeps turning. |
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