What, this? Last for ever, mate!
Like one of those butterflies leaping about on the other side of the world that we blame for spoiling our bank holiday weather, I've been expecting the case of Peter Ward, that good man of Liversedge who took on the Tesco dragon and gave it a jolly good hiding, to send LED marketing directors and company solicitors into arm-flailing apoplexy - but what do I find in the magazines? Nada - rien - nowt.
I've had loads of conversations with LED suppliers suggesting that promoting a product that will last - ooh - thousands of years, and backing it up with only a 12-month guarantee suggests something less than complete confidence in what their business is about. And now that The Case of Mr Ward and the Television that Failed has exposed the mantra that suppliers chant on the 366th day of your latest failed high-tech consumer goody - "Sorry, mate - its out of guarantee. If only it'd failed last week, we could have done something about it. Tsk."
But EU rules - those same rules that are crushing our long-fought-for freedoms - tell us that we should actually get a 2-year guarantee on electronics equipment, and that may extend to six-years courtesy of the Sales of Goods Act. But the key feature is that old chestnut about 'satisfactory quality and fit for purpose'. If an LED supplier tells you that their product will last for, say, twenty years and it is bought and installed on that basis - where does the issue of 'satisfactory quality' stand if that product fails after four or five years.
And answers came there none. And a great darkness fell upon the land. And a sound of nervous whistling could be heard from many a company boardroom.
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