Into Some Bad Housing
Dec 14, 2012, 4:25 PM | Updated: 5:22 pm
QUESTION: Scott in Tennessee says his daughter purchased a defective manufactured home. The home is still under warranty, but they aren’t willing to fix it. Does Dave think he needs to go to an attorney?
ANSWER: I would take the warranty to an attorney and have them sue the manufacturer. I’m not going to take their word for it because they are just trying to get out from under the warranty work. The way you describe it, it sounds like they closed under one name and reopened under another name just trying to dodge stuff.
The only thing you can do is see if you have legal recourse against the manufacturer or the seller. If your attorney tells you that you don’t, then you just bought a bad mobile home. You can buy defective stuff, it’s possible. There’s no guarantee that people will do what they say they’re supposed to do out there.
You’ve contacted them, and they are not willing to stand behind it. They aren’t offering any level of customer service on this, so you are reduced to having to deal with an attorney.
I would take copies of the warranty and sit down with an attorney and have them do a little research as to who you can go after. Then let him give them one more warning, and if they don’t do anything, then go after them.
You could also create a PR disaster for them. If it truly is the same bunch of people and they just reopened their company under another name to duck their warranties, then you could let everyone in town know what’s going on. That just involves buying newspaper ads. You can put the word out.
But you’ve got to get in there and figure out if that’s what’s going on. You certainly don’t want to do that and not be sure of what you’re talking about. Dig into it and talk to an attorney, and then decide your best course of action, legal or otherwise.
