WENDY KNOWLER | Has something you bought conked out? This is what the warranty law says

Warranties are wonderfully reassuring safety nets, but in reality they’re often invalidated by the most ridiculously irrelevant issues.

It’s standard practice for mattress manufacturers to offer 10- or 15-year warranties on their mattresses, but no matter how badly a mattress collapses or sags in that time, if there is even the tiniest stain on the mattress, they’ll whip that warranty away.

The logic goes that the stain is evidence that you failed to take proper care of the product so you are somehow to blame for its failure.

I recently took up the case of a domestic worker who’d bought a stove that turned out to have an ill-fitting seal on the oven door, meaning the oven was not fit for baking.

Normal wear and tear is not ‘altering’ as per the definition of section 56.

—  Ombud Magauta Mphahlele

That’s about as “unfit for purpose” as it gets, to use Consumer Protection Act (CPA) terminology, and in terms of the act’s “implied warranty” of six months, she had the right to return it for her choice of refund, replacement or repair.

But when she complained to the online store she bought it from, she was told that because there were some scratches on the stove, she had no recourse.

Nonsense, said consumer goods and services ombud Magauta Mphahlele at the time. (The retailer later relented.)

“Section 56 of the CPA provides that the consumer will not be able to rely on the implied warranty ‘to the extent that’ the goods were ‘altered contrary to the instructions, or after leaving the control of the producer, importer, a distributor or retailer, as the case may be’.”

But if a defect is unrelated to the alterations the supplier may not escape liability, she said. “Suppliers relying on stains and scratches to invalidate the warranty would imply that the CPA intended for the warranty to apply only if the goods are not used,” Mphahlele said.

“This would be ridiculous and defeat the purpose of the CPA.

“Normal wear and tear is not ‘altering’ as per the definition of section 56.”

In short, it’s not legal for a supplier to deny a warranty claim based on unrelated cosmetic issues.

Sadly, the CPA only covers six months from the date of purchase or delivery.

After that, the manufacturer’s voluntary warranty takes over, and that means they are fully entitled to impose whatever terms and conditions they deem to be appropriate, even if they make a mockery of that lovely sounding warranty.

That brings me to this week’s case study.

Andrew Bentley of Cape Town acquired a Samsung cellphone with an MTN contract last January. It recently stopped charging and, while the CPA warranty has long expired, Samsung warrants its phones for two years as opposed to its competitors’ one-year warranties.

“But Samsung will not honour their warranty because I have a small crack at the top of my screen,” he told me.

He then made his way to Wefix in Canal Walk, which is authorised to do repairs on Samsung phones, asking for his phone to be assessed.

He was directed to a sign on the wall that carries a long list of things that void a Samsung warranty, including: “Physical damage: ANY signs of physical damage including but not limited to drop damage, drop marks, dents, scratches, both light and deep scratches and nicks, will void your warranty.”

Bentley feels the company shouldn’t be punting its two-year warranty in its marketing and advertising, given that a phone of more than a year old is very unlikely to be in “out the box” condition.

I went back to the ombud for comment on this case, asking if her office has received similar complaints.

“Yes, we do get complaints of this sort, especially with regard to TVs and cellphones,” Mphahlele said. Some suppliers relied on the “no alterations” exception to the CPA warranty to avoid honouring a warranty claim, on the basis that the phone was damaged by the consumer, she said.

“In these instances we appoint technical experts to conduct a physical damage assessment to determine if indeed the cracked screen was the cause of the defect or we request a technical report from the supplier.

“If the assessment indicates that the defect that the consumer is complaining about was not caused by the cracked screen, we recommend the honouring of the warranty.”

But sometimes that still leaves the cellphone owner with a repair bill.

“As you know, our recommendations are not binding, so sometimes suppliers agree to honour the warranty and sometimes they do not.”

Sadly, I know that all too well.

The director of integrated mobility at Samsung SA, Justin Hume, said that despite the wording of that notice, each case was treated on its merits.

“To get to a charging port, we have to open up the phone, and if the screen is cracked, there’s a big risk of damaging the phone further,” he said.

He conceded that Bentley had not been given the benefit of that explanation and said his case would be reassessed.

MTN’s executive for corporate affairs at MTN, Jacqui O’Sullivan, told me earlier that her team would follow up with Samsung to ensure that his case “is attended to accordingly”.

Bottom line: If something you’ve bought fails within six months, know that legally the retailer and its supplier can’t refuse to offer you your choice of a refund, replacement or repair if it has a cosmetic blemish, not unless they can prove a direct link between that scratch or nick and the “failure” of the product.

If you find yourself in this situation, lodge a complaint with the Ombud.

Unfortunately, you have no such recourse if you find yourself in this situation after the CPA warranty expires.