Euro two year guarantee on hard drives "a myth"

Excellent web site. I hope the following info. puts you straight on one of your recent articles. Notwithstanding, being a contract manager already on the sharp end of Fujitsu's recent HDD faux-pas, this move to a one-year warranty across the industry is still a major cause for concern. That said, they would still be liable for 6 years under the Limitation Act in the UK if the FJ situation occurred elsewhere.

Re: The article on the 14th titled "Seagate, Western Digital to cut hard drive warranties too". and: "....There is something of a problem with these announcements within the European Star Belt. Community law requires that products be sold with a two year warranty. So if these vendors are offering two years in the EU, how come they are able to reduce the warranties outside the EU?"

This two-year warranty in the EU-area, having checked it in the past with the DTI, is in their words, a myth. see: here.

What is the effect of the "two years guarantee" that I hear about?
This is a longstanding myth, arising from a misunderstanding of the Directive. With regard to guarantees, the Directive merely says, in Article 6, that freely given guarantees will become legally binding contracts; outlines a few essentials that they must contain in their narrative and demands that consumers have sight of them if they want to read them (for comparative purposes). It says nothing about their length, does not demand they be offered and the Directive does not concern purchased guarantees (sometimes also called warranties).

Some of the confusion has probably arisen because in mainland Europe consumers' statutory rights are called their "legal guarantee". This does not mean the same as a retailer's or manufacturer's guarantee but the reference in Article 5 to a minimum two years liability period for statutory rights appears to have been confused with such guarantees.

In England and Wales, we currently have a six years liability period for sale of goods rights (limited to six years by the Limitation Act 1980). This means that compensation can be claimed against the supplier of the goods for up to six years after purchase, providing it can be shown that the defect was present at the time of sale, and it was reasonable for goods to last that long. Clearly, this does not cover wear and tear faults nor is it a durability requirement. DTI will not change this when transposing.

Paragraph 6, in the June 2001 summary of the consultation replies below, covered the two years issue (as did the Article 5 narrative in the first consultation). You can read that June 2001 summary by Clicking Here

Talk of a two years warranty/guarantee is therefore erroneous and the only relevance of two years, in this context, is to insist that other Member States provide for two years what England and Wales have, for decades, set at six years.

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