Help! my new cooker is broke and I have to wait for new parts! I've only had it 8 weeks!!!

[worley]

Hi,
dont know if this is the right place to post but heres goes,

we brought a new cooker from Currys mid feb this year but it didn't arrive till the end of march. However, last week the top oven dial broke and we have been unable to use the grill/oven, so I rang them and they said they would send me out a new dial to push on again. And if i needed to use the grill "to pull one of the other dials off and push it on so i can use it". I told him i was not going to damage any of the other dials and would have to wait for a new one to arrive.

Now the main oven dial has also broke, luckily (!) it broke and i was turning the oven off last night after i had just finished cooking tea. So, i ring them up today and they said that the parts were on order but as they were out of stock they cannot tell me how long it will be before they arrive in. And even once they are back in stock it takes them over a week to get them out to customers

I asked them what they expected me to do in the mean time as i have 2 children to feed but he said i would just have to wait and no replacement oven would be sent out!!!

can they make me wait like this or can i go back to the main shop and demand to see a manager?
i did go to the shop last week to moan but they gave me a phone number to ring instead of them dealing with it.

By luck, ds1 has gone to friends for tea after school tonight, ds2 and i will have soup and dp will eat at work, but in reality i cannot afford to not cook proper meals for over a week and we cant live off hob cooked food for god knows how long!!

what do i do now??

anyone?

Go back to the shop and demand to see the manager and say you will stay there till someone in authority sees you. An 8 week old cooker and the dials are already broken? My cooker is 14 years old and dials are as good as new. Maybe there is a manufacturing fault with them for two of them breaking. Have you got the manufacturers contact detail I would also telephone them and enquire whether they have had any complaints. I would have thought that under the Sale of Goods Act the cooker was unfit for the purpose i.e being able to use it and turn it on and off. Don't let them fob you off Comet tried that with me once over a vacuum cleaner was supposed to be brand new wouldn't pick up properly then I investigated and found belt broken and carpet threads wrapped around the brushes so obviously not brand new. I threatened to 'take them to the cleaners' got a result when they realised I knew my rights.

thank you, will go look up sales of goods act and go armed tomorrow at currys. cant go on for ages not knowing when i can cook for us all again!

Yes, go straight back to the shop. The phonenumber that they give you doesn't belong to Curry's - their customer services are subcontracted out and you're not speaking to anyone from Curry's or anyone with any power to act on Curry's behalf. (I found this out through an incident with our washing machine last year - 4 months old when it broke down.)

Tell the shop's manager that you're rejecting the cooker as it is demonstrably not fit for purpose and/or of satisfactory quality. If they don't replace it, you will simply return it to them anyway and leave it in the middle of their shop, buy a replacement from another supplier and issue a county court claim against them for the refund of the original purchase price (plus any extra it costs you to buy a replacement elsewhere).

You are within your rights to do all of the above. That said, I wish you luck because you'll need it. Currys don't give a damn about your rights - or even about halfway decent customer service. The reason they don't care IMO is that you'll have to take them to Court to enforce your rights - and not many people are going to do that!

And so, 6 months later, I'm NEVER shopping there again and I'm still telling everyone I know up to and including strangers on the internet about it!

P.S. Sorry for the essay! I'm still about the whole thing... I should get a life!

Aargh this brings back memories of similar story with washing machine. Go straight back to shop, demand to see manager and say you expect a replacement to arrive withing days and that you are not having it "repaired" - you want a new working one.

Worked for me.

Any joy yet?

You can demand a replacement, or a refund (and then you can get another one). You do not have to wait for a repair and it's your choice what remedy you want for the faulty cooker, not the seller's. It's clearly not of satisfactory quality, and for 6 months after you buy an item, it is assumed it was not of satisfactory quality when it was sold, if it develops a fault. You do not have to prove it was faulty, they have to prove it wasn't. And they can't. Complain and if they do not agree, report them to trading standards.

thankyou,
after ringing the complaints line and getting no where, i went back to the store again and spoke to the manager, she took the dials of the one they have in store and gave them to me, and said if it happens again go striaght to her and she will sort it out for me. then today i had 10 new dials arrive through the post. i think i will send them a letter to the head office as well.

i wone be getting anything else from currys though, their customer support is terrible

No we stopped using Currys after the washing machine fiasco. It could all be so much simpler couldn't it!

Well I'm glad common sense finally prevailed! Enjoy your 10 new dials!