After a real struggle keeping on top of it last year, I treated myself to a robot lawnmower in February this year. First used it in March (it was life-changingly amazing, I’m a single mum and it meant never worrying about keeping the garden decent enough for the kids to play). It completed a second mow about a week later with no issues.
I tried to use it for a 3rd time, but the app showed no connection and the mower itself was completely unresponsive. I phoned the manufacturer, established that the problem was with the mower (not the charger) and it needed referral to their technical team via email.
A few days later I got an email response, but they were asking me to get the mower to upload its data, which was impossible as it was completely dead and the function could only be enabled if it was connected. Each time I replied trying to explain, it was another day or two before they emailed back… so it was around 2 weeks later when they decided to send me a new battery to see if it would enable the upload.
After 2 weeks I’d not received the battery so emailed again - they replied to say there were no batteries in stock, so would replace the faulty mower ‘as a gesture of goodwill’. It was to be dispatched upon return of the faulty one.
I returned it 3 weeks ago, but as I’ve still not had a replacement, I contacted them again. They’ve confirmed they received the faulty one but the original warehouse is out of stock and there’s a delay (potentially a few months) before they can process it.
In the meantime, I’m already out of pocket for the significant (to me) cost of the mower, and I don’t have an alternative mower (or the time to manage doing it, literally my only time is after 8:30 when the kids are in bed and it’s over 300 square m so not a quick task) It’s now costing me even more to have someone come and cut it. I’m 2 months into this now and no idea whether it’s just poor customer service or if I have any rights to claiming reasonable costs whilst waiting for a replacement.
Although it quickly malfunctioned, Google doesn’t suggest this is a common issue and it was so good when it worked that I want to persevere with a replacement of the same model. I’ve asked them to escalate as a complaint due to the time taken and no end in sight, but based on experience so far I don’t think they’ll be forthcoming with help… is there anything else I can push them for, or do I just have to suck up the wait and extra costs??
Sorry it’s long- trying to include all the details, but thank you for any advice 🙂