Back in late October 2014 we purchased an Hitachi Fridge Freezer.

One of those amazing offers reduced from £499 to £349.

In mid April it failed with a code (5r) being displayed.

I called Argos and was advised that I should find a company to check it out and produce a report then they would make a decision.

The mention of 3 and a half years was an obstacle I was told.

Just how hard to find someone anyhow eventually (and a mini fridge purchase later) I find a local company.

2 visits and 2 hours later they decided it was an exceptionally small leak over time and repaired it.

They had a charge whatever plus an additional charge for the re-gassing.

Come late May I write to Argos and get a fobbed off reply that I used an unauthorised company (what?!) and they offer me a £30 store voucher.

This is NOT April the 1st.

I then reply again and again I get a letter after a month still offering a voucher and it appears I've been 'dismissed'.

On Sunday 5th August and two months has passed we are back to that '5r' fault display.

The unit has totally failed and I'm in despair.

What can I do?

Whilst you may be able to argue and win compensation for the fridge/freezer not lasting a reasonable amount of time without any such faults, the compensation would only be the lost amount of lifetime the product should have left. So for sake of argument the life of the appliance was set at 6 years, you would be left with only 50% compensation. You then have to factor in costs of getting an engineers report into the faults, costs of taking Argos to Court if necessary.

And then there is the issue of whether you used a repairer that had relevant experience or qualifications.

See what others say, but I am not sure it is worth pursuing, even armed with Sale of Goods act legislation applying at the time you bought it.

its CRA now.

under those rules they had one chance at a repair [all be it , so called unauthorised, but it got done]

the cost of that should be met by argos in any settlement under a CRA claim

you now need to raise that CRA claim, inc those costs,

have a quick nose around for sale sites and have a look at the 2nd hand value of the same fridge from the same time frame.

that should give you an idea of its worth and that should ideally be the sort of figure argos should be offering you.

dx

Thank you so much for the reply.

Nosed around in vain! The value 'new' is now circa £249

Spoke to Argos and they are telling me £30 and that's final as I had it repaired unauthorised plus 'Gassing' is considered natural wear and tear.

I gave them a dozen chances to knock money off a new replacement and they totally refused.

The failure is back to what it was previously - Code 5r.

I cannot believe that they would not consider their decision and appeared uninterested that I might pursue this in a CC.

I look in amazement at the 'wriggling' to fob me off with them saying I got it repaired so it's no longer their problem.

Is there something I'm missing here?

Thank you all for the replies.

I decided to replace this with another one. I think way too much 'chasing up' with probably getting 'banned' from them for expecting something that was quite valid. Hopefully this will not happen again and alas the 'unauthorised' repairer never replied when I said their repair failed.

Something not to be repeated.

M