To summarise the below in fewer words: Extended warranty company has given us the run around for 3.5 months over a coffee machine $500, They now want to replace it with a much lesser brand to the original one and less in price (about $199 - 250). Aswell as cancelling the original warranty. Have made countless phone calls every week to get answers but now starting to lose patience and wondering if taking it further might be the best option.
The long version
Bought a coffee machine a few years ago for about $500 which had problems from the start and was hardly used because no-one wanted to take it into warranty a second time.
I found out the extended warranty was still valid so 3.5 months ago contacted the extended warranty company Lumley retail and it had a 5 year warranty all up. 3.5 months later we are still no better off, the repairer had the machine a month and decided there was nothing wrong with it, brought it back with the same problems so he took it away again, after weeks of phone calls to Lumley. He then decided it was faulty and the whole unit had to be replaced
2.5 months later we get an email to say they will replace the machine with a new one, but it was a sunbeam and the warranty is no-longer valid, we weren't thrilled about it because the machine was a lesser brand than the one we had before, I specifically chose the original one because parts of it were made in Italy and had great reviews. We accepted it. 3 weeks later we heard nothing and the store responsible for replacing were supposed to call and didn't. They then say the model they chose is no-longer available so will have to see if there's something similar available, problem is the machine they suggested was about $450 and the others are all very basic entry level machines valued from about $150 - $299 which would actually be the type of machine we had before this better machine. When I spoke to the store before they said they were given a budget of about $330 including freight, which isn't much to get something good.
Lumley assured us that the model could be ordered in. So 2 weeks later, get a call from the store responsible saying they will have to give us a Breville machine, which retails about $200 and is actually the same machine we had before and were very unhappy with.
Ive made countless calls to Lumley over the 3.5 month period, they have been friendly the whole time but I'm now getting a bit annoyed as its been so long and we seem to have been given the run around.
What I want to know, are warranty providers supposed to replace a product with something similar in value? or perhaps even slightly better? Is it supposed to take so long?
I'm thinking of options now as I'm getting tired of dealing with them and thinking it might be better off to get that $340 from them and walk away, if its possible. The store they want the claim handled with is one id never deal with, their website is down most of the time too so that's another thing that's annoying.
Whilst I wouldn't want the hassle of taking it further, I will if need be. Is there an ombudsman who would be good to contact to get some results? or would the best option be the small claims court? That's of-course as the very last resort.
Bikies