Nelson retiree fought TV Shop over faulty $600 oven and won

Friday, 28 February 2020

The Consumer Guarantees Act requires goods and services to be fit for purpose, durable and free from defects.

Trish Scott bought a $600 Taste the Difference Air Roaster Pro counter-top oven from the TV Shop, but almost exactly one year later it broke down.

Rushed off her feet in the January holidays, Scott left it until February before she called Brand Developers, the company behind TV Shop. That delay put her on course for a tussle over just how long a reasonable person should expect a $600 electronic device to work free of faults.

Scott was just outside of the 12-month manufacturer's warranty, one of its contact centre staff told her.

'I was advised that due to the fact that I did not purchase an extended warranty, I was not eligible for a replacement cooker. Nor were they prepared to check the cooker to see if it was likely to be fixable,' she said.

Trish Scott of Stoke, Nelson with her counter-top air-roasting oven which stop working within days of it's warranty expiring.

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Scott said a $600 appliance that she bought on January 7 last year should not break down by mid-January the following year, after just a year of light use, or that TV Shop should be able to wash its hands of her.

So Scott, decided to fight her corner, and after being contacted by Stuff Brand Developers committed to replacing it, paying the courier fees to collect the faulty oven, and send a replacement.

Scott, who lives in Nelson, said she loved the air roaster, and could not believe TV Shop had no obligation to fix the device under the Consumer Guarantees Act, which requires goods sold by shop to be of acceptable quality.

She found herself in a legal grey area.

Consumer NZ says the act's terms 'reasonable' and 'acceptable' are deliberately open-ended.

'It depends on what a reasonable consumer would think was acceptable based on the nature of the goods, the price, any statements that have been made about the goods, and the nature of the supplier and context in which the goods are supplied.' the consumer watchdog says in its guide on the act.

'Ultimately a tribunal referee or a judge may have to decide what is reasonable or acceptable in the circumstances.'

But, Consumer NZ head of research Jessica Wilson said: 'A $600 cooker should last longer than 12 months.'

Every year Consumer updates its appliance life expectancy survey, polling members of the public on what they think are reasonable timeframes for devices to work without fault.

In previous years, the consensus was 15 years plus for whiteware like dishwashers, clothes dryers, fridges and ovens, and 10 years for washing machines.

Eight years minimum was expected for microwaves, and five years for kettles and toasters.

Scott did not know about The Disputes Tribunal, which is run by the Ministry of Justice, and operates like a lawyer-free mini court, enabling people to get decisions on smaller money disputes.

Scott said she would be willing to pay the $45 fee to challenge Brand Developers at the tribunal, which hears around 12,000 cases a year.

Brand Developers resolutions manager Carlo Santiago said the company put minimum warranty periods on all the items it sold and in the case of cooker.

He said the policy was to ensure 'everyone gets treated exactly the same', but 'our warranty does not override the consumer's statutory rights.'

Those statutory rights include those under the Consumer Guarantees Act.

Brand Developers should have treated Scott differently, Santiago said and he 'bent the rules a little bit' for Scott, who he said was so polite and well-spoken. 'I thought I was talking to the Queen.'

He would not say how long the device Scott bought should have been trouble free under the Consumer Guarantees Act.

Such judgments were made on a case-by-case basis, including factors such as the way an individual had treated the device, he said.

'We are confident it should last more than 12 months,' he said.

Scott's model had a less than a 1 per cent fault rate in the first 12 months of use, he says.

Brand Developers has a large customer base in Australia and New Zealand, and was among the most complained about companies to the Commerce Commission.

The commission used to publish annual Consumer Issues Reports naming the most-complained about companies.

In the last one that named individual companies, for the year to the end of June 2017, Brand Developers was one of the country's complained about companies, with 51 complaints.

Companies that received more compliants were Vodafone, Spark, Foodstuffs (owner of Pak 'n Save and New World supermarkets), 2degrees, Noel Leeming, Air New Zealand, Vocus, Progressive (Countdown supermarkets), Viagogo and Sky Network TV.

A response to an Official Information Act request published in October showed the Commerce Commission had received 24 complaints about Brand Developers in the year to the end of October.

In 2015, Brand Developers pleaded guilty to five charges under the Fair Trading Act for selling unsafe ladders.