Last year we bought a £1,000 dining table from Marks & Spencer, but one year and 14 days after it was delivered we noticed it had developed a large crack. It had probably happened inside the one-year guarantee period, but the table had been covered with a cloth.
We complained to M&S and it sent a technician from the Furniture Ombudsman. He concluded that it was due to the shrinkage of the wood and that it could not be repaired.
M&S has since offered to take away the table and refund us £830 – the amount it considers we have benefited by having the table for just over a year. Alternatively, we can keep the table and it will pay us £500 – neither scenario is particularly appealing. The ombudsman says it believes the M&S offer is both fair and reasonable. We had spent quite a lot on this table and had expected it to last for many years – certainly more than this. Have we been treated fairly in your opinion? JH, Crickhowell, Powys
On the face of it, many readers will assume you have been poorly treated given that most people would expect a £1,000 wooden table to last many years.
M&S told us that the table is no longer in production and, as a result, it cannot replace it. That is the reason it has offered you the unpalatable choices outlined above.
In our eyes, M&S has just about fulfilled its legal obligations. In such instances, when a refund is appropriate, the store is allowed to deduct a certain amount to reflect for the usage you enjoyed – in this case for a year.
A 17% reduction is a bit on the mean side, but it has probably calculated it on the basis that the old Sale of Goods Act required items to last six years – a one-year reduction would equate to 16.6%. This is why the Furniture Ombudsman, a body that has appeared many times in these pages, has sided with the store.
It is odd that a retailer of M&S’s stature didn’t offer an alternative table, but that seems to be the way with modern retailing. In your shoes we would accept the £830 refund and take our business elsewhere. We certainly wouldn’t accept the £500 offer to keep the table as it is. A spokesman for the store says it remains “in contact with the customer to try and resolve the situation”.
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