Poor after sales

We bought an AEG integrated dishwasher from Comet. It brokedown after 7 weeks. It took nearly 2 weeks for an engineer to come out and when he found out it was integrated and he would have to undo some screws he didn't even bother to check the machine. He said he would order 3 parts as one of them would fix it. It took over 2 weeks for the parts to come in and them another 2 weeks for a 2nd engineer to come out with the parts - so a wait of nearly 7 weeks so far!!

The second engineer took out the dishwasher and found out that the parts he had didn't fit our model and that the reason the parts had failed was that the salt dispenser had been leaking, probably from new. The underside of the machine was covered in salt crystals and was corroded. We told him that because of the corrosion we did not want it repaired but would like a replacement or a refund.

The saga then got worse. Comet wanted to come out and replace 4 parts that had failed - on a dishwasher that had been used about 20 times.
In the following 3 weeks we sent letters, visited the store (who didn't want to talk to us as we had bought it on line), sent lots of emails, had about 10 telephone conversations with Comet (premium rate line), spoke to Trading standards, AEG, our credit card company.

No one at Comet would 'own' the problem and all said they had no authority other than to arrange for a repair. After 3 weeks we had a call from Comet, which was their final offer, again it was a repair. We rejected this and started making arrangements to take them to the Small Claims Court. The following day we had a call from Comet offering a replacement or refund. We think this change of heart was prompted by ur credit card company. We agreed to a refund.

It took 10 weeks of my life to get this sorted plus money in phone calls and registered post plus I have got to get my replacement integrated dishwasher (from Appliances on-line) installed.

Moral of the story - never ever buy anything from Comet and when you buy anything over £50 use a credit card as it gives you extra consumer protection.