Sound, but no picture. (Hitachi TV)

denso13 said:
Sometimes, not always, only if your rights have been breached. And it is only 6 years to pursue a claim, therefore you'd ultimately have to take them to court and prove it was defective when sold to you. Same as the second year of the EU warranty, you have to prove it was defective at the point of sale.
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I think you would be very unlucky if a small claims judge did not agree that a TV should last for more than 18 months.

In the UK, technically, the burden of proof is on the buyer after 6 months since the purchase. Fortunately most manufacturers offer 1 or 2 year warranties. In this case, it is only 1 year.

You are correct about the 12+ month burden of proof in the EU though. It prompted many manufacturers to go from 12 to 24 month warranties because sellers did want the potential liability in the second year since sale. I noticed that post BREXIT, some manufacturers continued to offer EU citizens 24 months but only 12 to UK citizens.

When it comes down to it, IMO, a solid state device, such as a LED TV, should last far in excess of 2 years.

I would suggest that the OP use social media, such as Twitter, to ask Argos if it is happy with TVs that they import failing after 18 months. If no joy, then contact the owner of Argos, Sainsbury, via twitter.

If still no joy. Lodge a case with the small claims court. It will cost Argos more to defend themselves than to replace the TV.

If the TV was purchased on a credit card, section 75 may, or may not apply. It may be possible to convince the credit card company that the TV was not of merchantable quality.
 
I know high street retailer TV repair guy. He was made redundant 7 years ago as they don't repair many now. Just dump in skip and replace bust TV as cheaper.
 
Wayners said:
I know high street retailer TV repair guy. He was made redundant 7 years ago as they don't repair many now. Just dump in skip and replace bust TV as cheaper.
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A number of years ago I worked for Philips. They did the maths on the combined cost of supplying in-warranty and post-warranty support. Based on real failures, the balance came down in favour of ditching all the spares holding (stock, warehousing space, inventory management costs etc) and making he staff redundant. It worked out cheaper to give a replacement product.

What stopped them going ahead was partly the outcry it would have caused, but also human nature. You see, once you make something 'free' then people abuse it. Each month I'd go through the reports on in-warranty returns where dealers had sent back product as faulty but it wasn't. Some customer had changed their mind, or the store staff had screwed up somehow, so rather than deal with it within the various businesses they took the easy road of claiming it as faulty. I'd write-off thousands of Pounds worth of stock each month because of lazy staff. The in-warranty replacement would have worked had dealers and their staff been honest, but they'd break the bank based on the reality of returns.

Coming back to the repair guy made redundant, this is the effect of direct-import TVs made to order for retailers such as Argos and the supermarkets. They get an extra discount for something we used to call a bought-out warranty. In the case of Philips, the extra discount amounted to 4-5%. That was the deal if the retailer wanted to take on the burden of warranty support themselves so that no gear was returned for any reason to us as the manufacturer. The Chinese manufacturers ran with this idea too. That's why supermarkets never bothered with repairs once they started to bring in their own TV ranges. Quite a few fingers got burned though. In-store customer services aren't trained to check out whether a customer's claim that the TV is faulty is genuine. They just agree to refund. It's easier. Human nature will out.
 
opps said:
I think you would be very unlucky if a small claims judge did not agree that a TV should last for more than 18 months.
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I agree, just pointing out that the implication the Act, in effect, gives a 6 year warranty is just wrong. After 6 months the burden of proof is on the buyer, that's what the law says.

Apologies for taking it off topic, the Consumer Rights Act only brings the six year limitation in to make it the same as contract law which has the same 6 year limitation. That is, a 6 year limitation to seek a remedy, but only if the buyers rights have been breached. Nothing more...
 
denso13 said:
I agree, just pointing out that the implication the Act, in effect, gives a 6 year warranty is just wrong. After 6 months the burden of proof is on the buyer, that's what the law says.

Apologies for taking it off topic, the Consumer Rights Act only brings the six year limitation in to make it the same as contract law which has the same 6 year limitation. That is, a 6 year limitation to seek a remedy, but only if the buyers rights have been breached. Nothing more...
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Agreed, I wasn't disagreeing with you, that said..., one could lodge a case on the basis that a given product should have lasted up to 6 years. If the judge agrees, he/she may well find in favour of the claimant but factor in the utility that the claimant had received over that six year period and award a substantially lower amount.

As an aside, our main TV is a 2004 Plasma B&O BeoVision 5. It cost over £10,000 after discounts but I once worked out that, thus far it has only cost 8 pence per hour- it has been displaying a image for about 120,000 hours since we purchased it. OK, it is not HD, it doesn't even have HDMI, so I have to use a HDMI to scart adapter, but the sound quality is great. If that had failed after 18 months, we would have not been happy bunnies.
 
Sounds sensible. It's all about reasonableness (is that a word?), a cheap kettle may only be expected to last 18 months and you'd have no claim. Should a £90 telly last 6 years? Dunno.
 
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