Kirstin,hope this helps.
Guarantees/warranties
Many retailers offer a free guarantee (or warranty) to customers. Sometimes these are provided by the manufacturer and sometimes by the retailer. The Sale and Supply of Goods to Consumers Regulations 2002 set out rules that apply when you give a customer a free guarantee.
If you give a guarantee, you should remember it is legally binding on you. It must
be written in English and easy to understand
be clear on the content and duration of the guarantee
be available to look at, at the customer's request
state that it does not affect the customer's legal rights
include the guarantor's name and address
state how to make a claim and what will happen when a claim is made.
It is up to the guarantor to decide how long the guarantee lasts.
It is important to remember that a guarantee does not replace or limit a customer's rights. Customers are entitled to raise a problem with you regarding a product for up to six years from the date of purchase (five years from the discovery of a problem in Scotland) regardless of the terms of any guarantee. Customers are entitled to rely on the remedies available to them under law (outlined in this guide) rather than their rights under a guarantee, if they wish.
This means that if a customer complains to you about an item that is not fit for purpose , does not match the description , or is not of satisfactory quality , you must deal with their complaint - you cannot force them to use their guarantee.
Your own returns policy
Some retailers decide that it makes good business sense to have their own returns policy that offers customers more rights than they have under the law - for example, promising them a full refund for undamaged goods, up to a certain number of weeks.
If you chose to offer the customer more rights than the law required, you could impose conditions on the customer, for example
a requirement to produce the original till receipt
a requirement to return the goods unused and in unopened packaging
a deadline for returns
an offer to exchange or offer a credit note, but not to refund.
These conditions only apply to the additional rights you are offering. You cannot impose these conditions where a customer has a legal right to return goods. This is why the words 'this does not affect your statutory rights' are often included at the end of store return policies.
The critical words here are that a 'warranty cannot affect your statutory legal rights',however a lot of customers think this means they have a six year warranty on everything-the law determines that you have up to six years to make a claim on any product not deemed to have a 'reasonable' life,the word reasonable is the critical word here. To explain,if your fish and chips you left in the kichen for 2 months and were thus unedible,in theory you have up to 6 years to make a claim but a judge would probably deem that expecting 2 months life on your food was not 'reasonable'. If you bought a watch with a 5year guarantee and did not subject it to unfair abuse and it broke after 18 months a judge may deem that you should 'reasonably' expect a longer life.
Under the latest EU law,if a product fails within 6 months it is deemed that the product probably had the fault during manufacture so it is up to the seller to prove otherwise. If the product failed after 6 months it is up to the consumer to prove the product had an original manufacturing fault.
I suspect that a judge would say that 60 days is not a reasonable life for a battery that most of us would expect to last for a year,so the warranty is trying to affect your statutory rights and therefore is not relevant under UK law,this is subject to fair usage.
You note that the word 'reasonable' is subject to a great degree of interpretation.
KudosDave
