Be Excellent To Each Other

Here's a question for you legally-minded types. I know that when you buy something, the Sale of Goods Act protects you in the event of that thing malfunctioning, with the simple tenet that if the item in question fails before it has lasted a "reasonable length of time" that you have a case for getting it fixed "under warranty" as such.

Would this apply to cars too? And if so, what would be a "reasonable length of time" for one? How long is a piece of string? Obviously a £1,000 Tata Nano could only reasonably be expected to last so long, whereas say, a Toyota Celica that costs £20,000 new would be expected to last considerably longer.

The reason I ask is simply because the Celica I've bought seems to be suffering from the dreaded "oil consumption problem", where a design fault in the 1ZZ-FE engine causes thinning of the oil inside it and leads to excessive consumption. If left unchecked, the engine can run dry and cause severe damage.

Toyota recognised the design fault and said that any car under 7 years old and with a full Toyota service history would be repaired free of charge. My car is 7.5 years old and does not have a full service history - it has also had one full engine replacement in the past, presumably to fix this problem once before.

Would I have a case under the Sale of Goods Act here? Or, as I suspect is more likely to be the case, am I fucked and will have to fork out in full for any repairs that are required?

Considering I had a 6-month old Mazda 6 that I had to shell out on a new engine for when it exploded, I'm going to say "fucked".
I am not a lawyer, but the chap we bought in to fight our case was. He lost.

Ouch, yeah I'd forgotten about that. What was the cause of the explodey happenings? Did you ever find out conclusively?

Since the SoA doesn't last over seven years, I'm also guessing you're screwed. That said, companies are now getting wise to the fact that consumers are increasingly getting wise to consumer rights. This has led to a LOT of people responding to my bringing up the SoA by saying "you're not covered by that", trying to scare me off. Nice. Tomorrow, I'll see if Apple will play ball.

I've still no idea how Grim... lost that one.



The maximum length of SOG protection under any circumstances is considered to be around 6 years so fucked sorry.

Yes, it was because I let the engine run out of oil because I only checked it once a fortnight, rather than once a week.

What's happened there Craig?

Sorry GazChap, I think you're screwed on the Celica front due to it's age.

Balls. Oh well, better get saving some money then!

I rang Toyota. They can't help me out under warranty. They might have been able to, had the car not already had an engine replacement by a non-Toyota dealer.

But what they can do is top the oil up to maximum, take a record of the mileage and add the car into their system so that I can do a proper mileage-to-oil-usage check.

However, if the car is overusing the oil, they need to strip the engine down to establish what's damaged and how damaged it is, and then put it back together. This is 8-9 hours of labour at £78 p/hr, and that's WITHOUT repairing anything. Jeeeeez.

From my notes:

March 10, 2007: Bought Mac Pro from refurb store
March 20, 2007: Realised item was faulty. Contacted Apple. Was told to take it to local repair centre.
Late March: Mac ‘repaired’ by Rapid Group. 'Removed a loose screw'.
Summer, 2007: Mac still not working correctly. Returned to Rapid. Optical drive and fan replaced.

Spring, 2008: Increased and constant mooing noises. Intermittent buzzing from hard-drive area, which stops when Disk Utility is launched.
April 2, 2008: H/D upgrades attempted. Discovered broken connection on bay 2.
April 2, 2008: Letter sent to Apple. No response.

Although the unit's outside of warrantee, my opinion (having found a damaged internal component) is that the unit breaches the SoA on no less than three points:

1. Of satisfactory quality - was not, as it’s had several major faults, two repairs, and was clearly damaged when sold
2. As described - was not described as damaged - refurb is supposed to be ‘as new’, with only possible cosmetic imperfections
3. Fit for purpose - is not fit for purpose, due to noise and now due to upgrade issues

Of course, the onus of proof is on the buyer after six months, but my argument (if I have to make one) is that the main damaged item is an internal component, which you can only see when you remove both the Mac's side panel and the drive cradle—and that's not exactly something you do when you buy a computer. It's kind of akin to ripping up floorboards to check your plumbing's OK.

I have literally no idea how Apple will be with this, nor what the company will do. Ideally, I'd like a replacement or partial refund (a credit note for the Apple Store would also be fine). I suspect the best I'm likely to get offered is another 'free' repair. The possibility, of course, is that Apple will just tell me to fuck off, which wouldn't be the wisest move for the company, but it's perhaps more typical of a large corporation. We'll see, I guess.

Old Mac Grannell had a farm, E-I-E-I-O.
So, so sorry.

Net result: Apple really doesn't like having the SoA handed to them, and also says I need to get "proof" from a third party Apple repair centre that the unit was damaged from day one. Hmmm.