Manufacturer&#39;s warranty vs store warranty I want to make sure I'm thinking about this correctly before I accuse directly. TL;DR The big box store is treating my item as covered under their store warranty, with their rules, and not as a manufacturer's warranty, with their expanded coverage. They replaced the item this time, but I'm concerned they won't next time, under their rules. I want to deal with this now, rather than wait until it fails again. Does the store have the right to say their rules prevail? I want to say up front, Rheem has been wonderful to work with. Very helpful. THey've probably won a customer for life. The store, not so much. Details Purchased a Rheem water heater with a 12 year warranty. It fails in year 4. Manufacturer says it is under warranty and they will replace it. Just take it back to the store. I don't need a receipt. The store will call with the serial number and we'll approve replacement. In theory. In practice, the store refused to call the manufacturer, and insisted on a receipt. As a convenience to the customer, the store has kiosks so the customer can reprint old receipts. I was able to print one, but that only works if your wallet hasn't been lost or stolen and you replaced your cards. For those people, their warranty is suddenly void. The other issue is that the manufacturer says that if you pay anything, even a penny, for the replacement, then the warranty period of 12 years starts over. The store claims that, no matter how much you pay, the warranty is never extended. The only way to get a fresh 12 years is to purchase the full item. Clearly this isn't a concern immediately, but the device is more likely to fail after 8 years from now than it is before. So the manufacturer says they will cover it, but the store says they won't. Lastly, I called the manufacturer back to ensure I understood correctly. Before I was even half way through my question, they asked, &quot;Is this store xxx?&quot; &quot;Yes.&quot; &quot;They always screw this up. They never call us like they are supposed to.&quot; Steps so far: Called the number on the company website to talk with corporate. It was a fax machine. And there a numerous comments, going back years, complaining about the only number being a fax machine. Talked with the local store manager. He didn't see any reason they would take a return without a receipt, no matter what the manufacturer said. Didn't seem to comprehend the difference between a store warranty and a manufacturer warranty. The store sold the item and sells me the replacement. Do they get to determine the conditions? Or does the manufacturer's terms control? What are my options if the store refuses to replace it next time? It's too big to mail back.
They are separate warranties. The store doesn’t have to do anything about the manufacturer’s warranty and vice versa. It is of course good service if the store takes care of things for you, but that isn’t legally required. I expect that you don’t need a receipt but proof of purchase. A bank statement or credit card statement should do. My bank (in the U.K.) can provide statements 10 years back online.
No, the only purpose of a money order is that it's effectively a form of guaranteed cash that only one person can access. There are no additional protections offered by it. However, given that you are amenable to paying a little extra to facilitate your payments, you may want to consider using a credit card in the future. Provided it's not an all the time thing, credit cards will withhold payments on your behalf if a vendor fails to fulfill their obligations. This means that you're not liable for the cost of the merchant sending you the wrong thing or ignoring your order requests. I've personally done this for several things: Hotel reservation that was borderline unsuitable for human habitation. When a vendor failed to send something I'd purchased. When proceeding with this, bear in mind that the credit card company will want you to make such a claim as soon as possible and to provide as much information as possible to support your claim. If you've e-mail chains, save them. If you've been communicating by phone, write down and provide a summary of your communications. If you have an issue, don't wait a month to raise the concern, do it within a week. Probably about once a year I need to do something like this. Generally what this does is it starts a dispute process whereby the credit company will contact the vendor to get their side of the story (usually they don't respond to them either). After 60 days, the charge is dropped from your bill and presumably the credit card company refuses to pay for the disputed item. Ultimately, this gets you the best possible result. You get your money back and you didn't have to go to court to do it.
england-and-wales The government grants limited rights of return (thanks Jen), for which you are entitled to a cash or cash-like refund (e.g. reversal of a credit card charge as described below). The vendor has the option to go above and beyond that statutory minimum as a courtesy to the customer. In that non-compulsory zone, they have the liberty to offer store scrip rather than a cash refund. Of course, any business can try to cheat you, and then you have to stick up for your rights by insisting or reporting to relevant authorities. united-states If you buy with a credit card, the rules and contractual obligations of the credit card companies oblige the merchant to accept returns by doing a refund to the card. It's important to understand how this happens: the merchant isn't just picking an arbitrary amount of money and doing a new &quot;sale in reverse&quot;... they are identifying a specific past transaction that already happened, and modifying or reversing it. That is a system safeguard so they don't credit the wrong person or be tricked into a reversal on a transaction that never happened. That's why they want your receipt. On a cash transaction, it is sellers prerogative whether to issue cash or store credit. Issuing store scrip is a reasonable option to deter theft and fraud. For instance someone who wanted an item could get it for free, by buying the item, taking it home, returning the next day without the item, grab another identical item off the shelf and sneak over to the CS line and &quot;return&quot; it with yesterday's receipt. With cash sales, that would be completely untrackable, and the thief is gone. With credit card, they have your identity; with scrip they can &quot;flag&quot; the scrip in their system to either prevent its use and/or have a security officer detain you if you try to use it. For instance American home stores will cheerfully take re-saleable condition items back even without a receipt, but will issue a store voucher for the value rather than cash. That policy would be a disaster if they refunded cash. As it is, I find it rather convenient! So if you want the convenience of cash refunds, you can just use credit cards - gaining the feature at the expense of anonymity.
The person responsible for the leak pays This is a general principle that if your stuff causes harm, you are responsible for it as well of the costs of doing what’s necessary to stop it. This might or might not be you. Assuming the water is normal “splash” that is making its way into the unit below then it will be the person who is responsible for maintaining the waterproofing in your bathroom - that might be you or it might be the common property owner, you would need to check your by-laws. Of course, this assumes your building is new enough to have waterproofing - older buildings just relied on the tiling. If so, this is almost certainly your responsibility. If instead, it’s a leak from a pipe or fixture, then the owner of that is responsible. That could be you or the building owner or even your downstairs neighbour. Again, check your by-laws. Edit The OP has indicated they are a tenant, not the owner. In this case, it’s nothing to do with you unless your lease says you are responsible for building maintenance or you have been negligent. Residential leases almost never do the former and, unless you did something stupid, like allowing the bath to overflow or having water balloon fights, you probably haven’t been negligent. Refer the matter to your landlord and ask your neighbour to direct all future correspondence to them.
Legal action might be taken by the garage, because you had a contract to repair the gearbox which you cancelled (causing them some damages in time spent). You could hope that the store-owner will pay the invoice that you sent, but that seems to not be likely. The store owner can't sue you for sending him the invoice: the mechanic can sue you for not paying what the work billed for. But you do have a recourse, which is that you were acting on behalf of the store owner. I assume that you were in possession of the old gearbox, so it simplified matters if you took transported it to the mechanic, since the store owner was going to pay. In other words, you were acting as the store owner's agent: you were authorized to create a contractual arrangement between the garage and the owner. The one problem is that apparently the garage thought they were doing the work for you, and not for the owner. So they may sue you, and you may sue the owner. And suing anybody costs money. The owner is, perhaps, trying a strategy of not paying what he does actually owe, in the theory that the alternative of suing is too much time and bother (besides, it's the garage owner who would have to get the ball rolling – unless the shop owner first wants to sue to recover the gearbox). Given the information you have provided, I don't see a basis for the shop owner suing you. In order to sue someone, that person has to have caused you some damage. He could claim that he didn't authorize you to take the gearbox to the garage, or that you were negligent in making the arrangements with the shop (for instance if he said &quot;but only if they will do the diagnosis for free&quot;), in which case the court will have to decide whose story is more believable.
Dale has the right answer, but I'd like to elaborate on why it isn't lawful (as compared to why it would be unlawful). I know it doesn't work that way on line, but it's simpler to think of a credit card as a physical piece of plastic. The bank will have issued this to their customer. It will have a number and an expiry date. You have no way of knowing whether a replacement card has been issued. Even if one has, the customer has authorised you to charge a specific card - you do not have the customer's authorisation to charge a different card with a different expiry date. By guessing the expiry date, you would be making a representation to the bank that the customer has authorised you to charge that card (if it exists), when they have not.
A U.S. auto manufacturer promises in writing that its vehicles will, for the life of their vehicles, receive free hydrogen at its charging stations. . . . The written promise was related to the workmanship of the vehicle in connection with its software and hardware components. Was a warranty created? It sounds like there were two separate promises. A promise to provide free hydrogen (which is a contractual obligation, although not a warranty) which amounts to prepayment of hydrogen, and a warranty that the vehicle had adequate workmanship in software and hardware components. Was a warranty created even if the manufacturer failed to clearly and in readily understood language disclose what it was going to do in case of malfunction or defect with the vehicle relating to its ability to cause a hydrogen well to open and start filling up? Whether this is a breach of the agreement to provide free hydrogen, or a breach of the warranty agreement that the vehicle's recharging feature would work properly, or both, taken together it is a breach of contract by the automobile manufacturer. There were agreements, and taken as a whole, those agreements as reasonably interpreted in light of the intent of the parties and construing against the drafter of the agreements, were breached. Therefore, you should be entitled to the damages for breach of contract as measured by the benefit of the bargain test applicable to contracts. Most likely, repair of the defeat at the cost of the manufacturer and reimbursement of money you had to spend on hydrogen due to the defect.
Your first course of action should probably be to return to the store, explained what happened, and ask either for another jar of peas or for your money back. Bring your receipt and the jar of peas with the moth in it. If the store refuses to refund your money or replace the jar of peas, you might try approaching the manufacturer. In my experience, European packaged foods have a telephone number for customer service among the fine print on the back of the label. If the manufacturer is no help, you could consider taking legal action, but the costs of doing so would be far greater than any benefit you are likely to realize. That is the same reason why the store and the manufacturer will probably handle your claim without much resistance; the cost of resisting is far higher than the cost of a jar of peas.