Patience. This is both a complaint and a cry for help and advise.

We live in Lausanne and bought an LG washing machine (LG F1480TDSP for those of you playing along at home) back in October at a big box retailer that I'm going to call "Crap-o-rama". When it was finally delivered a month later in mid November (we paid for delivery and install), the guys "installed" it really fast, basically just showing my husband that water flows into the machine (I wasn't home).

The first time that he attempted to wash clothes in it that day, he discovered that it vibrates uncontrollably and makes a high pitched sound when the drum spins. He immediately turned the machine off; clearly this machine was DOA.

He immediately called Crap-o-rama's after sale department and they told my husband that Craporama was not responsible (even though the problem could have been bad installation) and that we should call the warranty technician. He told the guy that he wanted his money back but he said that you could only get a refund if it was in its original packaging.

He called the technicians and they told him that they could not come for two weeks (!), giving him an appointment on a day between 8am and 10am. On the appointed day, they called and told him that they had the wrong address (he gave them our address) and could not come!? They told him that he needed to make another appointment. He called a dozen times and each time they tell him that "someone" will have to call him back to make an appointment, but that person would never call. This went on for weeks.

Finally a technician showed up last week, telling us that the machine is a lemon and they would either have to order a new machine or a bunch of parts. After that visit, we haven't heard anything else out the 3rd party contractor hired by LG.

We sent a registered demand letter and email letter (for a full refund of this piece of crap) to Crap-o-rama two weeks ago with no response. What are my remedies here? Does anyone have any idea at all?

Does anyone have any advice or know what I can do? What is the law in Switzerland regarding such cases?

PS Sorry the post above is in such a tiny font! No idea how to change that...

Font Change: Click on Advanced Edit - you can, if you have editing powers, change the font.

I've moved it to Housing as, although I understand your feelings, you need advice and it might get missed in Complaints Corner. Same with the title.

If you want legal eagles to give you advice, you must make sure that they see the Thread and realise that this is a job for them.

Not sure about laws in consumer rights, something tells me they will be a tad different than elsewhere considering the level of customer rights noise we get.

Hope somebody will chime in, when IKEA delivered a completely different fridge than we bought and paid for, we waited about 6 weeks for the correct one to come with them saying the IKEA delivery service is simply overbooked. 2 weeks sounds good in my experience of dealing with this stuff here. That said, if you happen to tel them limited hours you guys would be available at home, it might have some role. The delivery guys (often subcontracted by the actual shop) might not operate outside of the regular hours, etc. Try contacting them again with a different availability times and see what happens.

__________________
"L'homme ne peut pas remplacer son coeur avec sa tete, ni sa tete avec ses mains." J.H. Pestalozzi

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We had a similar problem with a Candy Hoover machine here and yelled and screamed until they dealt with it.

Letter to the CEO of "Crap-o-rama" and phone calls and letters to the head of LG in Switzerland.

Also, if you have legal insurance, get them involved. The dealer cannot absolve itself of the warranty because it was not in it's original packing! That would be too easy. Do not allow yourself to be fobbed off and make absolutely sure that you have a copy of the general terms & conditions for the store so you know exactly what the warranty terms are.

By the way our problem was with another store and in the end they ended up crediting the amount of the purchase and allowed to buy something else instead. It took us close to three months though....

My husband has basically spent the last two months adjusting his schedule to that of the washing machine people, literally moving meetings so he could be there when they came

The machine was delivered after three or so weeks, and the technician finally came three or so weeks after that (after a few no-show appts --on their part).

The real issue now is that we have this big washing machine that doesn't work and the store is not responding to our letter or phone calls.

I had a problem with a Candy/Hoover, and fixed it myself! (OK, I do do have a machine shop at hand, but it was easier to fix it myself)

Tom

Start now with registered letters. You need a paper trail.

With my two left hands that wasn't an option.....

You might like to take out a subscription to "Bon A Savoir", 021 310 01 37, 11 copies per year of their magazine, for the princely sum of CHF35.50. It's the Swiss Romande equivalent of "Which" magazine. However, not only do they advise consumers, and also test all sorts of marchandise, but they have a very efficient service juridique which is very effective in "persuading" companies to honour their commitments towards clients (but you would probably need to take out a subscription to avail yourself of this service) www.bonasavoir.ch - good luck!

Alas, for the time it would take me to write a letter, I can machine a new part (really)!

Time is money, so I have to balance it.

Tom