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dclegg

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#170948 31-Mar-2015 13:48
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The topic of the Consumers Guarantee Act comes up on Geekzone frequently, so I thought I'd share a positive story from a recent experience.

We have a Fisher & Paykel One Touch dishwasher which over the weekend suddenly decided it didn't want to wash dishes properly any more. We had purchased it on June 2012, which puts it around 9 months outside the 2 year manufacturers warranty.

Under the circumstances, I knew I could either ring up the retailer or the manufacturer. I know that dealing directly with the retailer is usually the preferred route to take, but due to the fact that I couldn't easily take the dishwasher back to the retailer, and that they'd possibly redirect me to an authorised repairer anyway, I decided to call F&P directly.

The woman at the call centre was extremely helpful, and told me that as long as the fault was established to be not caused by us, we would be able to get it repaired free of charge. The technician will come out to our house, diagnose the fault, and ring back to F&P with a report. F&P will then decide whether we're liable for repair costs or not. She seemed extremely well rehearsed in dealing with CGA issues, and I didn't have to fight the expected pushback when I invoked it's name. 

The service technician left our house about an hour ago, and confirmed that F&P will be covering the repair cost entirely. 

Nice work, Fisher & Paykel :-)

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networkn
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  #1274374 31-Mar-2015 13:52
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The only way it could have been better is if you hadn't of needed to mention the CGA at all :)

Did they originally refuse to repair it or did you open with it? The last white ware repair we got done, the unit was 2 years out of warranty and didn't have to mention a thing, vendor was more than happy to repair regardless. 




mattwnz
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  #1274382 31-Mar-2015 13:56
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Did you actually have to mention the CGA though, as it sounds like you did? I don't think people should have to mention it, as it is law, and the manufacturers and retailers should know the law inside out.
 How do you know you it won't be something that is caused by you? I had a dishwasher that failed, and it wasn't anything to do with me, however when it was inspected, it was found to be a cockroach had got into the control panel and and shorted out the controller board, so it was a $400 cost to fix it. You could argue that insects shouldn't be able to get into that part of a machine and it is poor design, but it would be very difficult to argue that. Also could be an inusrance claim, but the excess was that.

dclegg

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  #1274388 31-Mar-2015 14:00
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networkn: The only way it could have been better is if you hadn't of needed to mention the CGA at all :)

Did they originally refuse to repair it or did you open with it? The last white ware repair we got done, the unit was 2 years out of warranty and didn't have to mention a thing, vendor was more than happy to repair regardless. 



I opened with it.

I figured (possibly unfairly) that if I hadn't mentioned CGA, F&P would be happy to send out a technician and simply charge me for it. 

And when the technician was here and ringing back to the mothership, he mentioned there was a note on my file requesting a free out of warranty service. While not empirical evidence, it does tend to suggest that if you don't push for CGA assistance, you may not get it. Then again, this could be unfair, and F&P may have a policy of requesting it for all repairs on white goods < n years old.



MikeB4
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  #1274392 31-Mar-2015 14:02
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Excellent, good to hear these stories.

andrew027
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  #1274393 31-Mar-2015 14:02
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Well done.

I had a similar experience with Samsung recently. My front loading washing machine that I bought in late 2009 (so well out of warranty!) stopped working about two months ago. I rang Samsung directly and was prepared to raise the issue of CGA if necessary, but they looked on their system and saw that in the last ten years I have sent in the warranty cards for two built-in ovens, a cook-top, four TVs, a blu-ray player and a smartphone in addition to the washing machine. They said as I was a "loyal customer" they would fix the machine free of charge so long as the problem was not something I had caused. They sent a repairman out, he diagnosed it as a fault in  the electronic panel that sits behind all the buttons, and ordered the part. It arrived two days later, the repairman came around after hours and installed it, and... it didn't fix the problem. So he went out to his van, brought in a new motor, installed that, and the machine is running better than it has in as long as I can remember. So... new electrics, new motor, didn't cost me a dime (other than the thousands I had already spent on Samsung poducts over the years!)

dclegg

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  #1274396 31-Mar-2015 14:03
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mattwnz: Did you actually have to mention the CGA though, as it sounds like you did? I don't think people should have to mention it, as it is law, and the manufacturers and retailers should know the law inside out.
 How do you know you it won't be something that is caused by you?


I have no idea if I had to mention the CGA, as I opened with it. :-)

I knew that calling the technician could put us at risk of paying for it, if he concluded the fault was caused by us. But that is entirely reasonable, and F&P even informed me of their fee schedule. But we were reasonably confident that this was product failure, and not user error. And the technician agreed.

This post was meant to be a balance to all the times people have tried to invoke the CGA, but had severe pushback in doing so. While you do have a point about retailers/manufacturers offering CGA coverage when the consumer doesn't bring it up, I simply can't comment as to whether that would've been the case here.
 


networkn
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  #1274397 31-Mar-2015 14:04
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andrew027: Well done.

 So... new electrics, new motor, didn't cost me a dime (other than the thousands I had already spent on Samsung poducts over the years!)


Money well spent I'd wager!

 
 
 
 

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freitasm
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  #1274530 31-Mar-2015 15:43
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Here we go then: I bought a $599 Icebreaker jacket nine months ago. Used for five months during winter (have another two jackets so wasn't used all the time) and put in the wardrobe. Tried using it last week to find out one of the dome buttons just fell out. Emailed photo to Icebreaker and was asked to send the jacket to their offices in AKL. Got an email telling me a new one is on its way.

Period. No argument. No crap "What is CGA?"

Just good service.





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JimmyC
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  #1274536 31-Mar-2015 15:49
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freitasm: Here we go then: I bought a $599 Icebreaker jacket nine months ago. Used for five months during winter (have another two jackets so wasn't used all the time) and put in the wardrobe. Tried using it last week to find out one of the dome buttons just fell out. Emailed photo to Icebreaker and was asked to send the jacket to their offices in AKL. Got an email telling me a new one is on its way.

Period. No argument. No crap "What is CGA?"

Just good service.



That's awesome! I love Icebreaker gear... 

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