Do not accept their 1st replacement appliance offer

Basically domestic and general have been taken over by a new company last year and they are going to boost profits and then sell the business on. One way to boost profits is to reduce the amount the company is paying out on replacement appliances.

I am in the middle of getting a replacement tv, it is meant to be like for like in terms of specification. I keep hearing the word specification a lot for example if I had a black washing machine and it got written off, they could offer me a silver machine because the colour isn't a specification apparently, it is just a preference of the customer!

Anyway the way their system works is they have the models of TVs and then have a long list of spec to compare to my tv which was written off... so you have refresh rate, size, resolution, hdmi ports, USB ports etc.

Well my TV cost £1500 when I got it, but the tv I am being offered is only £599! And it doesn't do half the things my old one did, on top of that it's only a 50 inch instead of 55 inch! If you are getting an appliance replaced you basically need to point out to domestic and general which specification points do not match up with the old one you had otherwise they will literally provide the cheapest appliance possible.

Even if it's the smallest difference use it to your advantage because domestic and general will use the fine print against you! Another good idea is to find a model yourself and give them the model number and just show them how the specification is similar to the one you had.

They also had the cheek to try and tell me they don't provide 3D TVs anymore as they don't consider it as a specification anymore until I just told them I'm not stupid, I don't care what you think but my TV was 3D and I want a 3D tv as a replacement so please stop lying to me... 20 seconds later they said ok we will find a 3D tv for you! The battle goes on but poor show so far from domestic and general.

Also the general lack of knowledge amongst telephone staff and managers is shocking, they don't know their own terms and conditions! One big suggestion would be to leave copies of terms and conditions for your employees to see themselves.