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. This issue would apply to any white goods appliance.

“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 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. Just the same as if it was going in his own home instead of a flat he is renting out.

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. This is no different though to any house. There’s no way an engineer is going to attend an appliance under guarantee and enquire if the house it’s contained in is rented or not and discriminate accordingly.

There might be an argument that technically the guarantee on an appliance is given to the owner of that appliance. It is not normally transferable. So there could be a technicality whereby an appliance is being used by someone other than the owner is not covered. But as I said, if an appliance is just installed into a normal household under normal use, then the manufacturer should just repair it if it goes faulty under guarantee. As long as the fault is covered by the guarantee. I would suggest that to avoid any potential issue the appliance should be registered in the address it is going to be installed in.

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.

Related: Rent appliances