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Comment by constantcrying | Hacker News Reader

I don't think the courts really matter, what does matter are the legal guarantees. In the EU it is an explicit two years, so I think a situation like this, where a 9 year old appliances is being repaired under threat of legal action, simply won't arise as the customer has no legal basis for his claim.

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2 years is the EU-wide minimum, individual countries can raise that bar. The Netherlands for example has the same reasonable expectation rule as discussed in the article. You absolutely will win a similar court case here (I know people who've done it).

A not often discussed problem with the EU guarantee is that in the first 6 months, every defect is presumed to have been present at the time it was bought. After 6 months it is on the consumer to prove it, and for most things it is just not worth it to pay for an expert opinion.

So in practice the iron clad guarantee is only 6 months for most consumer products.

At least that's the interpretation of the law in the UK.

edit: small claims courts are quite accessible in the UK, so often the threat of small claims can get thing moving.

The term at which burden of proof shifts from the retailer to the consumer has been raised to 1 year in the EU (maybe not in the UK due to Brexit). As this is a matter of civil law, the standard of proof is also "more likely than not" proof, not "beyond reasonable doubt". You don't necessarily need an expert opinion, it _can_ be sufficient to collect a bunch of reports of similar failures.

> The term at which burden of proof shifts from the retailer to the consumer has been raised to 1 year in the EU

This is great to know. Unfortunately yes, UK won't pick it up automatically.

And yes, in practice you need enough proof to convince a small claim judge, which might not be a lot, especially if the defect is well documented.

> A not often discussed problem with the EU guarantee is that in the first 6 months, every defect is presumed to have been present at the time it was bought. After 6 months it is on the consumer to prove it, and for most things it is just not worth it to pay for an expert opinion.

I don’t think the EU says anything that specific (https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/dealing-with-customers...)

> At least that's the interpretation of the law in the UK.

If that’s true, I think it would be specific to the UK.

Also, what the UK says isn’t relevant for discussing EU consumer rights anymore.

That's just the summary. If you follow the link to "EU Directive on the sale of consumer goods and associated guarantees" [1], Article 5.3 states:

"3. Unless proved otherwise, any lack of conformity which becomes apparent within six months of delivery of the goods shall be presumed to have existed at the time of delivery unless this presumption is incompatible with the nature of the goods or the nature of the lack of conformity."

A sibling comment states that this might have increased to one year though.

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:31...

Depends on the country, in the UK, in addition to the EU mandated 2 years, we have the same "reasonableness" law, although there's a 6 year limit.

I mean, there are normal consumer protection rules. But it's actually commonplace for a lot of appliances at least in Germany and Japan to have a 10 year operational guarantee. I don't really how you can enforce it in either place, but it does seem to me that at least the big traditional companies to stick to these periods for bigger appliances such as air conditioning, fridges, washing machines etc. Interestingly for smaller more modern devices, like say, a table top dishwasher, you're lucky if these things last a year and you'll have a hard time enforcing the 2 year warranty even with the help of the consumer protection agency.

>But it's actually commonplace for a lot of appliances at least in Germany and Japan to have a 10 year operational guarantee.

But these are a voluntary guarantee from the manufacturer, which naturally are much harder to enforce legally. As you are not arguing the law, but the manufacturers wording of his guarantee.

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