Each of us at least once, but went to Aliexpress in search of freebies or huge discounts. But most buyers are afraid to make expensive purchases, due to ambiguities about warranty obligations in the event of a product breakdown. To date, most large stores have full-fledged warehouses in the Russian Federation, as well as contracts for after-sales service. And even this makes you doubt when purchasing TVs, robotic vacuum cleaners or other large and small household appliances. In today’s article, I will tell my story about purchasing an expensive robot vacuum cleaner, identifying a defect in it, and my attempts to return the goods to the store under warranty.

On April 25, I purchased an Ecovacs Deebot N8 robot vacuum cleaner from a trusted Smart Life store for a rather large amount of 34,990 rubles. Delivery took place to the door by a courier from DPD. The total time from the moment of payment and receipt of the goods took no more than 3 days.

This robot vacuum cleaner was bought to replace the old man Alfawise, who moved to another apartment. As for the Deebot N8, I could not get enough of it as a small child, because the vacuum cleaner can: recognize carpets with an increase in power when hitting them and driving around while performing wet cleaning, perform combined cleaning (wet + dry at the same time), supports control using Alice’s virtual assistants from Yandex, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, as well as building complex maps and keeping 2 maps in memory at the same time (for example, if you have a two-story house).

My happiness from the acquisition did not last long, about a week. One fine day, I sent the robot vacuum cleaner for cleaning and went about my business. After a while, I decided to check the cleaning status and saw that the vacuum cleaner “fell” into an error on laser navigation. It seems nothing criminal, especially when we live in an apartment with a long-haired cat, I thought, and did not attach any importance to this. But upon arrival home, I saw a robot in the middle of the apartment without any signs of interference. At the same time, the application sinned for the failure of laser navigation and the D-Tof component in particular. Naturally, I tried the suggested options by the application and even did a complete reset of the robot’s software, but everything was to no avail.

The first thing that was decided to be done was to contact the w3bsit3-dns.com forum in the profile thread for all Deebot models from Ecovacs. Of the proposed solutions, there was one, banal one: many models have a childhood illness in which the drive belt flies off the lidar gear. It is treated by disassembling and placing the gum in its place. Since the robot vacuum cleaner is still under warranty, I did the analysis of the vacuum cleaner at my own peril and risk (I do not recommend doing this) and, as a result, I did not see a problem with the rubber band. But! I saw that the drive does not spin when the vacuum cleaner is turned on, and this is already a problem at a higher level. Therefore, we assemble the vacuum cleaner and proceed to the second stage – the fulfillment of the store’s warranty obligations.

To do this, it was decided to write to the personal messages of the store in order to receive any instructions for action. And what do you think, the manager Ksenia threw off a detailed procedure, which I began to follow.

At the same time, I decided to write to the official representative of Ecovacs in Russia, but I received not the most rosy answer for me exactly 21 days later.

We return to the Ruston service center, which fulfills the warranty obligations from the Smart Life store and transfer information about my problem to it. As you can see, there is nothing criminal, the service asks to fill out 2 applications for a refund or warranty repair.

We send the necessary information and wait for a response. And to be honest, I did not expect to see the answer on the same day, but he did. Ruston sent a DPD courier to pick up my robot vacuum the next day, ie May 13th.

After that, a painful wait began with an answer, which was interrupted after 4 days with good news: “Your faulty product arrived at our place, passed the quality check, the defect was confirmed.” The next step is to agree on the replacement of the defective product with a new one (if the latter is in stock), or a refund. And since I filled out both applications, in general, I was ready for any deal.

On May 19, a new email arrived saying, “Expect a package with a new product.” Today, May 24, through messages on VKontakte, they wrote to me DPD in Russia and told me the track number, as well as the delivery date for today’s date. Closer to 17.00, a courier arrived and handed over a new robot vacuum cleaner.

Now let’s sum up. On May 12, I started the warranty process, on May 24 I received a new product to replace the defective one, and I did not pay a dime for it. In these 12 days, you need to add time for pickup and delivery, as well as for product diagnostics. Therefore, being in close proximity to the MSC, you can significantly speed up the whole process.

What I want to say in the end, it’s clearly not worth being afraid to make expensive purchases on Aliexpress, as well as seeking the truth from stores. The only thing I would recommend paying attention to is the “Warranty service in certified services” plate on the store page, as it will be easier to get a warranty repair or a refund.

But let’s assume what would happen if I made a purchase in local chain stores (MVideo, CSN, Eldorado) and ran into a marriage. Paragraph 1 of Article 20 of the Law of the Russian Federation “On Protection of Consumer Rights” clearly states: “The period for eliminating product defects, determined in writing by agreement of the parties, cannot exceed forty-five days.” And since I have already encountered warranty repairs with one retailer in the Russian Federation, then in the future you can easily count on all 45 days. Therefore, Aliexpress is not a panacea, but still, most stores have a more loyal approach to their customers. That’s all for me, all successful purchases and less marriage.

PS. At the beginning of this year, I purchased a new model of a Realme smartphone and it all resulted in a 4-month dispute. More details are described in the corresponding article at this link . This is for those who believe that in disputes, the buyer will win 100%.