Al
Warranty is in legal question
Bought a Whitestone Dome product from Amazon. It was a pack of two screen protectors for the Pixel 8 Pro. The product arrived with cracks and was unusable. Through Amazon support questions, I was sent to a messaging system with Whitestone Dome. They sent me a fairly extensive list of requirements to honour the warranty such as currency, proof of purchase, purchase location, purchase date, purchase order number, variant, quantity, etc. These would be fine if I purchased from another party, but these are entries that are already in their system. The process felt unnecessarily cumbersome and gave me the impression that customers were being asked to complete more steps than necessary to make them less inclined to pursue a warranty claim. I was also required to create an account on a separate website and re-enter information that was already available through Amazon, which Whitestone Dome was messaging through to begin with. After signing up and completing all of these entries, their site asked me to pay USD $24.99 in order for them to honour the warranty. Charging me half the cost of the product for warranty? Luckily since I bought from Amazon, I could go through them as the retailer. However, this suggests that had I bought directly from the Whitestone Dome retail site, I would have been asked to pay the same $24.99 warranty fee rather than being able to rely on Amazon to resolve the issue. As a UK consumer, I have serious questions about whether this approach is compatible with the Consumer Rights Act 2015. Consumer Rights Act 2015 Section 23. (2) If the consumer requires the trader to repair or replace the goods, the trader must- (a) do so within a reasonable time and without significant inconvenience to the consumer, and (b) bear any necessary costs incurred in doing so (including in particular the cost of any labour, materials or postage). They tried to charge me $24.99 USD for a replacement under warranty. In the end, I had to contact Amazon themselves through a support chat for a replacement. They did it for free.



