Hsamuel ring faulty

[brydonj]

Hi all,

 

Hopefully someone can advise as to how best to handle a situation I have currently with Hsamuel.

 

For mothers day last year, I bought my wife a ring (from the kids) that she had been looking at for a while. It is a white gold/sapphire ring, with 10 very small diamonds either side of the sapphire in a wishbone type shape. The ring was £180 when I got it.

 

I'll give you a quick run-down of the saga we've had in the last 12 months..

 

Within two weeks, one of the small diamonds had fallen out. No marks/damage to the ring. Hsamuel sent the ring off for analysis and repair and deemed it to be "accidental damage" and not a fault with the ring. I argues my case, but in the end it cost roughly £60 for the repair.

 

Once we got the ring back repaired, within another month another diamond had fallen out. Again, they sent it off for repair and came back with an accidental damage diagnosis, and wanted £80 this time. Again, I had no choice but to pay the repair to get the ring back.

 

This happened a third time, another 3/4 weeks later, and I got a different manager in store who agreed to change the ring for us (for free) if i took out a warranty on the ring for £25 to cover all eventualities free of charge (over and above the £25 initial cost) on the new ring.

 

I thought I might as well because it was a certainty to break again. Anyway, the ring is now 12 months old and my wife has this second ring in for repair twice (done under the warranty). When she went to pick up the ring from its latest repair, they advised that it was going to cost too much to repair it this time so had replaced the ring with a new one and that the warranty was not longer valid as it was a new ring. She got talked into taking out a new warranty on this ring also - another £28.

 

 

I am very angry with HSamuel about this, because the ring quite obviously has a flaw in the design and I don't believe for one minute my wife is the only one to have had this issue with this style of ring. She has other rings with stones in them and not had any problem with any of these.

 

I have now splashed out almost £200 over and above the cost of the ring which is only 13 months old and I am exteremely un-impressed with HSamuel. Is there anything I can do to either re-claim some of these repair costs or at least protect myself going forward for any (inevitible) costs for repairing the ring?

 

 

Thanks

[nicolawelch]

Sue them for the price of the ring, warranty and repair costs. Your outlay will be much less than the next repair and they may well settle. If they dont, you get your day in court.

[rebel11]

Hi bry

 

Have a read of the OFT

guide on SOGA (10).

[brydonj]

Thanks very much folks ... will take a read at the guide and decide what to do from there