Must M ti I put t up with Three’s repeated attempts to repair my phone?

QA ZTE V7 Blade phone I bought from Three in February developed a fault after a month. The battery won’t keep a charge so Three told me to return it to ZTE for repair, which I did. Two days later it came back to me, but the problem remains. I told Three about the ‘one repair only’ clause in the Consumer Rights Act (CRA), but it claimed it wasn’t Three’s responsibility, and that ZTE must carry out another repair. Is this right? Peter Gilmore

ANo it’s not, and we’ve told Peter not to send the phone back to ZTE. His rights under the CRA are the same as they would be for any goods covered by this law. Three’s customer-service team thinks that ZTE needs to fix the phone. Wrong. Peter bought the phone from Three, so his contract is with them, not ZTE. Three needs to stop shifting responsibility.

We suspect the phone has a faulty battery, but Peter doesn’t need to prove this. Because one repair has already failed he can return the phone for a refund or replacement. Three can only avoid these options by proving that Peter has damaged the phone, so it may ask to examine it. We’ve explained this to Three, and sent the company Peter’s details.

Recently, we’ve had several cases of companies trying to foist second and even third repairs on customers. They seem to be unaware that under 2015’s Consumer Rights Act customers can demand a refund or replacement after just one failed repair. We could perhaps forgive this in the few months after the law was introduced (October 2015), but not 18 months later.