Cooking up a solution to one couple’s oven crisis
Q COULD you please help my elderly neighbours who do not have the internet? They bought a Servis gas cooker from Argos in late September 2016.
They paid around £370 including a connection charge. In early February, the oven stopped working.
They reported the fault, and five days later, a technician arrived who said it needed a new thermal coupling. But the wrong part was ordered so it could not be fitted.
Since then, despite many phone calls, the correct part has never arrived. They are always told the coupling is on order but never when the cooker will be repaired.
Now, more than a month after the fault, they still have no oven – it’s bad anyway but really worse as they look after two young grandchildren each working day and rely on oven-cooked meals for them. Christine T
A WHICH? SAYS: The Consumer Rights Act 2015 says that if a fault occurs within six months of purchase – this was just over four months – it is presumed to be there at the time you bought it, unless the retailer can show otherwise (perhaps deliberate or accidental damage).
It is the shop that must prove this. It’s not up to you to demonstrate anything.
If one attempt at a repair has failed, and this was the case here, you have the right to reject the goods for a full refund – or a price reduction.
The easiest course would have been for the retailer to replace the cooker with a new one (it’s still available from Argos).
But you have to know about this vital piece of consumer legislation – you can’t rely on the retailer or any call centre or service agent to tell you about it.
You are not expected to go for over a month without an essential kitchen item.
One difficulty here seemed to be that the specialist service agents Servis sent did not communicate as well as they should have done with Argos.
Argos has now rectified the situation for your neighbours. It sorted out a repair person with the correct part to restore the oven. And it sent them a £50 Argos voucher as a goodwill gesture.