Major failure as the set is a set…not bought as individual units. It fails as a set to do what the set is designed to do ie allow 2 way communication between the 2 devices in the set. It probably ticks several of the major failure boxes, not fit for purpose & not as described being 2 of them as well as a person would not have purchased them if they had known of the problem…
ACL sets no requirement as to what a problem has to be for a person to not want to buy it if they had known of the problem:
“It has a problem that would have stopped someone from buying it if they’d known about it”
I side with @mark_m. I disagree it could be a major failure since it worked fine for 4 months and a PTT is easily fixable (probably by replacement as a result of its cost) but doing it the hard way, replacing or lubricating the offending PTT switch should fix the talkie.
Would a reasonable consumer categorise a short lived switch 4 months on as a reason they would not have bought a product if they had known it might fail prematurely? If they would not have purchased on that basis, would they with good faith ever buy any product with a switch knowing it might fail prematurely?
A warranty replacement or repair (eg minor problem) on vendor discretion seems in order, not a refund.
Only 4 months in and it has failed and only after minimal usage in that period. A faulty part maybe a once off or perhaps a much larger on going issue with these units. It doesn’t work as required, if they wish to refurbish it they can do that in their own time and replace the defective unit now or replace the set. My confidence in the continued use of these would be greatly diminished particularly if used as safety communication equipment.
Yet the ‘set’ can be ‘repaired’ and made whole again.
If one failed again in the year (?) no matter how, I would agree it is unacceptable quality. Unless there is evidence this particular failure is common I suggest it would be difficult to claim the product is unfit for purpose, or cannot be easily remedied by a repair (or replacement if that is how they do warranty service), eg a minor failure. A business could chose to offer a refund anyway for their own purposes, eg the product cannot be repaired or replaced with an acceptably similar product as the product line may have changed, but that is ancillary to the points.
is unfortunately not actionable in the ACL, unless I missed it.
Let agree we see it differently, and await @phb’s resolution.
Do we know if these units are specifically a ‘set’ - did they have some kind of selcall/etc that was potentially preprogrammed that made them ‘work together’ and not with anything else? It seems more likely it might have been two UHF CB’s sold as a package deal/bundle, where either of which would access any other similar spec (within the limitation of 40/80 channels/etc) UHF CB/repeater/etc …
Yes if it were RFDS/Marine/Commercial (suitable for emergency services for example)/etc - in these categories it should be considered a safety or emergency communications device and early failure would be a serious concern that would dissuade me from buying that brand again unless it was clearly a one off. If it is a CB, then for me it falls into the convenience comms category so my expectations would match the price - a lot lower …
They are open channel…not a locked frequency or encoded to only work as a pair.
The working one is still fully functional, but for us we only have the two and use them to communicate within the family…in and around the house and yard…and visiting neighbours. One by itself is not much use as we don’t scan the channels for a chat.
… and fair enough - I’ve twice added a pair of UHF CB’s to the menagerie of transceivers I have, the second after I lost one of the first ‘pair’. They both have dual charging docks/etc - annoying to only have one and given the purpose they were bought for it makes them next to useless - now I have three but two ‘styles’ of charger docks. So be it … The radios I have in the car and house are different, not intended to talk to family as such - could as easily talk to someone in Canada - but that’s another story
After not hearing from Anaconda, even though they said they would get back to us in a day or two after dropping the defective handsets off, we made contact with them after 4 days to find out what was happening.
We called the Launceston store number on the return product slip and after waiting on hold (in a call line) for about 30 minutes, and when answered found that the number wasn’t the Launceston store but was a redirected number to the Ananconda centralised customer service call centre. They couldn’t help us and said that we needed to contact the store.
They gave us the stores correct number and when it was answered locally and advised we hadn’t heard from them about the returned product, we were told that it was close to closing time and they might not be able to find anyone to help us. We said that we should have called earlier if we have not heen in holding pattern from calling a number, which was wrong, on their paperwork. Felt that again we were inconveniencing them from calling late in the day. Anyway, after persisting, they advised that the handsets had been sent away to be repaired. We queried why we hadn’t be called and advised this as indicated when we returned the faulty handsets. Looks like it wasn’t their problem that they didn’t contact us.
We then said could they please ensure that they call us when the repaired handsets are returned to their store. We were told this is something they usually do (will wait and see).
Will provide an update when any ‘news’ has ben heard of their repair.
We are disappointed in the level of customer service received in the two contacts with Anaconda Launceston this week and will definitely be providing feedback to Anaconda headoffice when the handsets are returned as the service experienced to date is unacceptable.
Edit: The main reason why the service has been unacceptable is
Anaconda personnel have not showed empathy or even apologised for the inconvenience caused by the products failure to work;
One feels that the problem lays with the consumer and the contact has inconvenience store personnel
Anaconda not meeting obligations communicated through contact; and
Anaconda staff presenting different information on rights of the consumer in relation to faulty products.
All in all, Ananconda has a lot to do to improve a customers experience when visiting their stores.
