I was told in a shop at the weekend (hi there, if this was you) that I would not be able to enforce my warranty directly against the bike manufacturer if necessary, as my contract was between me and the bike shop, with the warranty being a term of a separate contract between the bike shop and the manufacturer.

That hadn’t been my understanding, so I consulted my contract law textbooks…and it may well be that you can enforce your warranty directly if need be.

On my understanding, you can enforce the warranty directly, as the Contract (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 gives you (the third party) the benefit of any contract purporting to confer a benefit on you (which the warranty agreement between the manufacturer and the bike shop surely is). You’ll need to check the terms of the contract between the bike shop and the manufacturer, first, though. This may be the supply contract (which will likely be confidential, although you’ll be entitled to see it if you litigate the issue, or even if you submit a pre-action letter of claim threatening litigation). Or it may be the general warranty documents itself, which are available on the manufacturer’s website. I don’t know. Ideas?

Anyway my point, in brief, is that conventional analyses of how warranties operate in the UK (“deal solely with the shop – you have no remedy with the manufacturer directly”) don’t seem to take into account the effect of CROTPA 1999, which they teach you in the first week of law school.

If anyone has direct experience which suggests I’ve got this @rse over t1t please let me know.

what have you broke?

Nothing yet, but if I did, I wouldn’t be able to obtain a remedy from the shop itself, so I need to know I can chase the manufacturer. Which I can.

I dunno, I heard Trek were pretty good on that front no? what kind of riding do you do that leads you to worry that you could break such a big hitter?

😉

Why can’t you go through the bike shop if you don’t mind me asking?

To chuck a spanner in the works, unless it’s a British bike manufacturer, isn’t the retailer’s contract with the importer/distributor who then has another (international) contract with the manufacturuer for the import and sale of their bikes.

Wow. It sounds like the entire contractual structure is designed to insulate manufacturers from claims by their consumers. All messed up by CROTPA 1999…unless there is a carveout in the contract of course. Which is likely.

I can’t use the shop for bike 1 because it has gone under.

I can’t use the other shop for bike 2 because it’s overseas and a faff. I had to check that French contract law is governed by the same contractual principles as in the UK. It is, plus it’s harder to contract out of the Code Civil’s equivalent to CROTPA. But an additional layer of complexity nonetheless.

So it’s complicated, but boiled down I think this is the type of situation CROTPA was designed to cover. I’m sure there must be other European law on the end-user’s side as well (UTCCR maybe?), plus, risk of adverse PR.

Basically I was unimpressed by the shop’s mardy attitude on this subject particularly as it seemed to conflict with common sense, so I had another look at the law and I’m not sure the position’s as clear as they made out.

So you did all that on a purely ‘what if x happens’ basis? You must be a fun chap!

learning the law isn’t fun but injuring the self esteem of LBS managers reminiscent of the Simpsons comic book guy certainly is

You would have a couple of options. Defective equipment claim against the retailer under contract and implied terms of sale and supply of goods act 94 and possibly direct against manufacturer (although depends on identity and location) under statute Consumer Protection Act. Typing this on iPod so not going to ramble on but that is the basic position.