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 :-)