Hello everyone,
I am in a bit of a predicament. I purchased an Asus laptop from Harvey Norman about 15 months ago, and it has failed (no hard drive or display activity). It came with a 12 month warranty, and as being an OzBarginer, I did not buy the extended warranty.
According to the ACCC (http://goo.gl/WVSeNc, http://goo.gl/7Ujfse), even though it is out of warranty it should still be expected to last without defect within a reasonable amount of time, which I've read here people would assume for a $1000 laptop that it would last ~3 years, which is how much it would cost.
According to the ACCC I can take the laptop to the store I bought it from, and they should work with Asus to have it fixed, assuming no damage was caused by me, rather a fault in the product. If Harvey Norman was to tell me to send it back to the manufacturer at my own expense, they are breaking the law.
Now, this is where my story starts. I went into Harvey Norman yesterday with a couple of pages printed out from the ACCC's website, and told them about the laptop, that it isn't working and before I even told them it is out of warranty, they had tried to get me to send it back myself, with some bull**** about "you need to try to contact the manufacturer at least 3 times before you should be coming to us with anything, and to have it in writing", this is already in violation of the ACL, I went on to tell him that he's wrong, I then showed him the print out from the ACCC, he then agreed that it is his legal obligation to send it back.
I then explained that it was out of warranty, but that it should still be repaired as it is only out of warranty by only few months.
By this point he agreed that it should still be repaired by Asus, and that they should be the ones communicating with Asus, not me.
While waiting for the contract to be printed out confirming all the usual (data sensitivity, your data may be wiped, blah, blah) a few other staff members came and talked with the man, they then tried to tell me that I should be sending it back, and that Harvey Norman cannot do anything.
I explained everything I already had explained to the other man, signed the contract and left. They had said that they will call me when I have to pick it up. Tonight I found a voicemail left on my phone from them saying that I have to call them back ASAP.
I assume they are calling back to have me pick up the laptop, for me to send back to Asus myself, at my own cost.
My question is, if the laptop is out of warranty, should I be the one that sends it back to Asus, or is it still Harvey Norman's responsibility?
It doesn't seem that the ACCC is as clean-cut with the answer about this with a simple yes or no as it is with other topics.
To me, it says that the retailer is responsible for returns, and that the product needs to last a reasonably expected amount of time before any major defect can be overlooked. Meaning that the two simply go together and Harvey Norman should back their stocked products.
I've heard a lot about Harvey Norman attempting to get out of their legal responsibilities, and even had the staff attempting it with myself, so I was not totally sure if this was them doing this again, and I do not want to have an argument at the store if it turns out I am wrong.
Before anybody says anything about it, I am aware of Harvey Norman's prices being in most cases ridiculously inflated, and they are making a great profit on everything they sell. The reason I bought it via them was because it had a pricing error at $999, and was sold above $1500 everywhere else.
If I were you, I would send laptop back to ASUS, I am not sure, but what I remember, ASUS's some laptop come with 2 years warranty, or it might be worth to try it to ask ASUS about warranty.
I don't like send 3C back to retailer to claim warranty, they always trying to find excute to avoid it.