The difficulty would seem to be the difficulty in reproducing the problem under test conditions and correct legislation.
If the manufacturer has produced a product that meets the relevant legislation in their country and the product is bought and redistributed by an importer who is liable? It's going to depend on the terms of the agreement between importer and manufacturer.
Then there is a further problem of 'proving' that the user has not made an inferior substitution. If you can buy a £35 starter on Ebay that is apparently identical to the one fitted by Iame, did the user do so and is it the Ebay product that has failed.
The user may swear that the starter was the original but how would you 'prove' it if the parts aren't identifiably marked.
Then there's the whole problem of 'correct use'. If I remember correctly, the Blue engine originally came with a warning that the engine was designed to work up to 15500 rpm. The engine can turn in much higher RPM, one habitually sees 16000 or more on the 'overrun'. But of course that is 'misuse by the user'.
Not excusing the fact that starters break, but if Iame can say that their test engines start and run under test conditions reliably, then it's the user/ importer who could be said to be at fault.
|
|