Tumble-Dryer

Our tumble-dryer was one of the product-recall ones, due to a 'filter fire-risk'. A recent email from Hotpoint:

"Your repair status

"Due to high demand it is currently estimated that we will be able to complete the modifications to your tumble dryer in November.

"We will be in contact with you in due course to arrange the repair visit from our engineer.

"You need take no further action if this is your preferred option.

"Alternatively

"If your dryer is over 1 year old and you would prefer not to wait until November for your repair; as a goodwill gesture, we are able to offer a brand new Hotpoint tumble dryer at a reduced price. For the reduced price, we will deliver, install, remove your existing appliance and replace it with a new dryer.

November! They've got us over a barrel here - but with a five year old device (which has given us no trouble) we naturally arranged for the upgrade at £99.

The dangerous one

The T/D gap

The new one

Registering the device on the phone, I got the stick and carrot from the call centre.

One year warranty and parts free after that for a further nine years. But the parts can only be fitted by a Hotpoint engineer and there's a fixed call-out fee of £199.99 (the full cost of our new tumble-dryer is £299).

Or, ... , you could just pay £2.30 per month (for ever) and we'll fix/replace it for ever.

The seduction of lock-in - I love marketing.

Ignoring the time cost of money, it would take

£299/£27.60 = 11 years

for Hotpoint to break even, so I guess this tumble-dryer is designed to work for quite a while.

We rejected the deal: if it breaks out of warranty,  we'll just buy a different one.