Defective Child seat:refuse replacement?

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Tue 27 Mar 2007 12:46
Defective Child seat:refuse replacement? - UncleR
Another consumer advice question from me...

About 10 months ago we bought a rear-facing car chair from a local shop (it's ok, we are local people). The car chair is a very well known brand. After about 7 months use the handle started clicking out of place sending Junior forwards (Oblivion style, Alton Towers). I joke, but it wasn't very safe to carry him in it relying on the carry handle any more.

We took it back to the shop and they exchanged it for a brand new one. Sorted.

Now, just 3 months on, the same thing has happened to the replacement.

The shop have spoken to the manufacturer who suggest that we are holding it wrongly and have dispatched a replacement for us to collect in a few days. My other half has explained that we are concerned that the fault will recur but this may not be until child number 2 comes along (not for a while thanks!) as Junior is not going to be in this seat for much more than a month. By then the warranty will have expired. The car seat has a 2 year warranty.

After speaking to the shop, my other half agreed we would come in and be shown how to hold it properly. Unless I find that I have been holding the car chair in some inappropriately rough manner, I can't see any reason to believe that the same fault won't occur again and by then we'll be out of warranty.

How would you proceed? The shop are very helpful but ultimately I want this seat to last and IMO it has a design fault. Should I (indeed, could I) ask for an alternative as these goods are not 'fit for the purpose'? Am i entitled to ask for a credit note or refund?
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Tue 27 Mar 2007 15:14
Defective Child seat:refuse replacement? - graham woods
Hi there, have a word with your local trading standards office, and they will tell you what your position is. Cheers, Graham.
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Tue 27 Mar 2007 15:21
Defective Child seat:refuse replacement? - Happy Blue!
Firstly see what you are doing wrong if anything. If you are not, then i would ask for a refund, but be prepared to accept an exchange for an alternative brand. We have three children and we used the same car seat for the older two as little babies and the same car seat for all three as toddlers. We have only just - after 8 years - replaced that with a new one for our 2.5 yo daughter. However all cars seats are a PITA and I have not yet come across one that does not have some design flaw making them awkward to fit/use/carry etc and some IMHP are dangerous even if Which? says they are fine.
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Tue 27 Mar 2007 17:18
Defective Child seat:refuse replacement? - boxsterboy
How can you hold a car seat wrong??

But if you get a replacement it will soon be redundant, and unless no. 2 arrives on the scene in the near future the warranty for the seat will have all but expired.

I think there are more important factors in family planing than the warranty on a car seat!
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Tue 27 Mar 2007 17:43
Defective Child seat:refuse replacement? - bignick
Rear facing child seats are only for babies up to about 12 monrths and yours has lasted that long (with one replacement) so I think you might have a problem claiming it as not fit for the purpose. I would push for a discount/allowance against the next stage for the current sprog and buy a new seat when no 2 comes along.

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Tue 27 Mar 2007 17:49
Defective Child seat:refuse replacement? - mikeyb
Regarding child number 2 I was chastised by local mothercare when the catch on our seat broke. I popped in and needed a replacement there and then as we were away for the weekend. In conversation with their resident car seat expert I mentioned ours had broken. She asked how old etc as it may be under warranty. I said it was about 3 years old and on child number two so not a warranty issue and not unhappy with the seat - just needed a new one. She was horrified that I had used the same first stage child seat for two children and made me feel quite guilty for doing so. Apparently the manufacturers recomend you buying a new seat for each child.

Is anyone else aware of this?
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Tue 27 Mar 2007 18:22
Defective Child seat:refuse replacement? - UncleR
Thanks all.

@boxsterboy

>>But if you get a replacement it will soon be redundant, and unless no. 2 arrives on the scene in the near future the warranty for the seat will have all but expired.
I think there are more important factors in family planing than the warranty on a car seat!

Yes the warranty will have expired so we'll use if for a few months and possibly need to replace it if this fault recurs. Indeed there are more important things in family planning but I'd rather not fork out another £130 for a seat when I can use the one I have bought which I reasonably assume should last longer than 10 months (remember the manufacturers warranty is 2 years).
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@bignick

>>Rear facing child seats are only for babies up to about 12 monrths and yours has lasted that long (with one replacement) so I think you might have a problem claiming it as not fit for the purpose. I would push for a discount/allowance against the next stage for the current sprog and buy a new seat when no 2 comes along.

The seat is for use up to something like 14kgs and Junior is well under that. I'd be happy to trade it against a forward facing one. I might ask but they'll probably think I'm trying to pull as fast one.
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@mikeyb
Apparently the manufacturers recomend you buying a new seat for each child.


Sounds ridiculous to me. Probably some spurious reason about possible invisible cracking or something...
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Tue 27 Mar 2007 18:25
Defective Child seat:refuse replacement? - bignick
>> Apparently the manufacturers recomend you buying a new seat for
each child.
Sounds ridiculous to me. Probably some spurious reason about possible
invisible cracking or something...


may well be spurious but on the other hand it IS a safety related product and it WILL be your child so I would err on the side of caution.
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Wed 28 Mar 2007 13:12
Defective Child seat:refuse replacement? - Muggy
I thought the law was that child seats must be rear facing until the child is two years old, not 12 months?
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Wed 28 Mar 2007 13:28
Defective Child seat:refuse replacement? - Brian Tryzers
Don't think so. RoSPA lists the types here: www.childcarseats.org.uk/types/index.htm Some authorities maintain, with some justification, that children should travel facing backwards up to the age of 3 or 4. Volvo sells a seat designed for this purpose, but admits that it won't fit in a V70 behind a driver who's more than about 1.75m tall. (I'm 1.98m, so we didn't buy one.)

The law specifies where a child may sit and what restraint must be used in terms of age for young children and age or height for older ones; what constitutes an 'appropriate restraint' is defined in terms of the child's weight, not age. Our no.2 moved up to a group 2 seat before his second birthday because he could no longer fit comfortably into his group 1 seat; he's now 4 (and 22kg) and has a friend the same age who still uses a group 1 because he's only 15kg and not yet big enough for a group 2.
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Wed 28 Mar 2007 13:14
Defective Child seat:refuse replacement? - No FM2R
I'd say Espada III has got it about right.
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Wed 28 Mar 2007 13:17
Defective Child seat:refuse replacement? - paulb {P}
We got so fed up with ours clicking and clunking about that in the end it was just easier to leave it in the car and lift B Jr. in and out of it there. Oddly enough it was easier to carry him without the seat, too.
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Wed 28 Mar 2007 14:37
Defective Child seat:refuse replacement? - PhilDews
Rear facing child seats are generally upto 9kgs - our daughter was in hers until about 7 months, and then she moved to a forward facing seat because she couldn't physically fit in her rear facing - feet right up against the seat!!
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Drive Your Way - If anything can, TerraCan
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Wed 28 Mar 2007 14:55
Defective Child seat:refuse replacement? - UncleR
>>We got so fed up with ours clicking and clunking about that in the end it was just easier to leave it in the car and lift B Jr. in and out of it there. Oddly enough it was easier to carry him without the seat, too.

So sounds like you had a similar problem? Only thing with taking them out of the seat is that if they are asleep, they wake up (grumpy!)

Our car seat is designed for use up to 14kgs. Apparently, the fact his legs touch the seat doesn't matter - it's all about their heads being lower than the back of the childseat. But soon it will get silly...
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Wed 28 Mar 2007 15:02
Defective Child seat:refuse replacement? - Brian Tryzers
There's Touching the Seat and there's Pressed So Hard Against the Seat that His Knees Are Almost on His Nose. That was what first sent us shopping for a group 1 - at about 9 months for no.1, IIRC.
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Wed 28 Mar 2007 15:09
Defective Child seat:refuse replacement? - paulb {P}
So sounds like you had a similar problem?


Not sure there was anything actually wrong with it as such, but certainly unless the handle was just so, it had a habit of lurching back a notch. I am perfectly prepared to accept that it might have been user error. Leaving it latched into the separate base proved an acceptable work-around until the occupant grew too big for it (although not in fact too heavy). We now have a couple of Britaxes (First Class Si in my car and Eclipse Si in the Panda, if memory serves).

We found that although there was a certain degree of grumpiness at being removed, by and large he soon nodded off again (possibly as a result of being his father's son and liking his kip...)
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