Buying an appliance for a rented property

I received an interesting email this morning regarding the guarantee on a new fridge to be installed in the purchaser’s rented property.

“I was told today at Currys that the manufacturer’s 12-month guarantee on a new fridge would not be valid as I was buying it for rented flat we own. They tried to sell me their insurance instead. Is this true?

I can’t claim to be a consumer expert, but I would say no it’s not true at all. As long as it’s used in a normal domestic situation how can there be a problem? It’s just going to be plugged in and left running to look after a normal amount of food, just the same as all the other fridges they sell, and just the same as if it was going in his own home instead of his rented flat.

I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they may be getting confused into thinking it’s going to be used in a commercial situation because the fridge is being bought by someone as part of their commercial business. But if it’s in a normal house, with normal people, there’s no logical reason why it shouldn’t be guaranteed totally normally.

Having said that, if the people renting the flat misuse or abuse the appliance there would be problems if an engineer was called out under warranty and said the fault was caused by abuse. This is no different though to any house, there’s no way an engineer is going to attend an under warranty call and enquire if the house it’s contained in is rented or not and discriminate accordingly.

I’ve never heard of any manufacturer’s engineer being called out to a faulty appliance under guarantee asking the customer at the house if they are a home-owner or renting the property.

UPDATE:

I’ve recently started to see advertisements on TV for “landlord insurance” where at least one insurer is saying you need separate insurance if you are a landlord. I can’t tell if this is strictly necessary, or if they are just selling an extra insurance tailored towards rented properties at a higher cost but covering more issues. The insurance industry may feel that people in rented houses don’t look after appliances as well as if they had bought them – which is probably generally quite true. However, the 12 month guarantee that forms part of the purchasing costs of an appliance is unlikely to have such stipulations. I interpret these ads as targeting landlords who need contents insurance to cover the house they are renting out.