A fight over a $585 Fuzzy Logic LG washing machine has ended in the NSW Consumer Trade Tribunal after the owner claimed that LG and the seller Big Lee had an obligation to fix it after a $0.50 cent coin penetrated the washing machine bowl.
Hong J Liu was so incensed when LG refused the warranty claim with the matter ending up before the NSW Consumer Tribunal.
The claim was dismissed after the applicant told the tribunal that soon after she commenced using the washing machine she noticed that there was “a sound in the machine”, but as it was working she continued to use it until about the end of October 2009.
A short while later she noticed that there was a hole in the plastic material of the bowl of the machine.
An inspection by a service engineer revealed a 50 cent coin underneath the washing bowl of the machine.
The applicant denied that it was her $0.50 cent coin.
She told the tribunal that she had been very careful when using the washing machine, and she had always checked clothes before placing them in the machine. She could not understand why the 50 cent coin was under the bowl of the machine. She told the tribunal that she had used the machine for less than one year, as she been in China for three months.
She maintained that as she had not put the fifty cent coin into the LG washing machine it was “therefore a question of design or quality in the installation of the machine, and whether the work was done by a skilled technician, or maybe by an apprentice”. She believed that that “there was something wrong with the quality of the machine”.
She said that she had not used the machine since she had noticed the hole inside the machine as she was “scared of being electrocuted”. She said that she had not been given a copy of the warranty.
She demanded that LG repair the washing machine or, alternatively, replace it with a new washing machine, LG refused on the basis that the damage was not covered by the manufacturer’s warranty.
The court heard that there was no dispute that a 50 cent coin had been found in the interior of the machine. The pump below the washing bowl had been damaged and needed to be replaced.
