Lemon Law
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
And I think it's a good thing environmentally. Because a consumer cannot really know how durable a product is, so producers try to lower prices by reducing quality. Which makes it so that one has to buy new stuff more often, leading to lots of waste. But these laws solves that, the cost of a bad quality product cannot be hidden and passed on to the consumer.
For major appliances IIRC this has been shown in court to be as much as ten years. I think at some point in the past apple caught a lot of flack for this over "Apple Care", a paid add-on to give you a longer than basic warranty, but neither the original nor the enhanced warranty were as good as the legally required warranty anyway.
I guess this probably still applies in the UK, for now, as well.
I still come across many who don't know the law, and retailers take advantage of it by coercing gullible consumers into submission. And those who are able to whisper the magic words of consumer guarantees act gets a relatively speedy resolution.
Oh and a favorite trick is to have a mandatory warranty registration within X days from purchase and/or pay shipping one or two ways (which is easily $20 each way, depending on size and carrier)
So yah, you toss a lot of stuff at the end.
It took about 4 days before they caved in to his demands and refunded his money.
Note that in the US, if you end up with a lemon you have to make your claim through the manufacturer, not the dealer. Use the phone number that is in your owner's manual. Every state has it's own criteria for determining if a car is a lemon. In North Carolina, the law says "reasonable number of attempts", which has been commonly accepted to be four. Or has been out of service for 20+ business days over a year.
https://ncdoj.gov/protecting-consumers/automobiles/lemon-law...
The key was not to do this on their property and not advertise your issue publicly, as that would just get you a suit. I think he suggested something like “Ask me about my experience at this dealership”.
http://wwwdata.unibg.it/dati/corsi/8906/37702-Akerlof%20-%20...
But here the seller also have the right to try to repair the device, within some reasonable limits. So if the AC of my new car stops working, the seller can try to repair it, and can actually make several attempts before I can start demanding a new car.
Seriously, where does the name of the law come from?
Sense 5, slang: "a person or thing considered to be useless or defective"
It's dated slang now.
(Edited for clarity)