The filter cage on my Dyson Supersonic hair dryer came loose in October, so I called Dyson for a repair. I agreed to pay £99 for a new filter cage and service.
It was collected at the end of October, to be returned in five working days.
Three days later, Dyson told me they couldn’t fix it, they would refund my money and return the dryer to me in 14 days.
I bought a replacement filter cage from Dyson for £18 because I found it easy to replace it myself.
The hair dryer did not arrive. I called and emailed Dyson many times but they all said the same thing. They couldn’t find my hair dryer.
At the end of November, Dyson emailed me offering to sell me a refurbished Supersonic hair dryer for £99.
If I didn’t want that, they offered me a 25 percent discount on a new one. I bought the original for £239.99.
Since my hair dryer wasn’t broken, I just needed a new part, I think the offer to sell me a discounted one instead is clever practice by Dyson.
Strand-ed: NM was left without his Dyson hairdryer like this for weeks – because the company lost it and then recycled it when he sent it in for repair (file image)
I said I just wanted the old one back. I then received a response saying: ‘We regret to inform you that your Dyson machine has been recycled.’
After complaining, they offered me a refurbished machine for free, instead of £99.
But I’m still very unhappy that my hair dryer was recycled by mistake, that I’ve been without it for over a month, and that the communication has been so poor. New Mexico
Helen Crane, This is Money’s consumer advocate, responds: These are expensive machines: the Lamborghini of hair dryers.
So it’s disappointing to know that when you needed help with yours, Dyson left you high and dry.
It was out of warranty, so he paid £99 to send it back to replace the filter cage (the metal grille that filters out dust and debris) and repair the machine.
But what should have been a simple solution turned out to be anything but.
The filter cage is a cheap part and you can see that if you had one you could easily attach it yourself, so I can’t understand why Dyson said it couldn’t be repaired.
Instead, you decided to buy the part and do it yourself, but in the meantime, the dryer seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth.
It’s still unclear what Dyson meant when he said his machine was “recycled.”
Was it disassembled and parts used for refurbished hair dryers? Or is it just a nice way of saying: we threw it away or we lost it?
And is it normal for a customer’s hair dryer to be recycled if it can’t be repaired?
Either way, I think it’s unfair that you were asked to pay £99 for a refurbished hairdryer, or even more if you didn’t fancy a model made up of used parts.
I can understand recycling a hair dryer if it is completely broken and useless to the customer, but yours worked and only needed a small replacement part.
He felt like he was being pressured into buying another hair dryer when he didn’t need it.
You told me: ‘I seriously think this happens all the time and people just buy a new machine thinking theirs is really kaput.’
Dyson finally offered you a refurbished machine for free, but you weren’t interested in having one with used parts, which would have no warranty.
And by now you were seriously annoyed by the poor communication and the amount of time you had been without your hair dryer.
You showed me some of the emails you had received from the company and I could see why you were frustrated.
They kept promising you that someone would locate your hair dryer and get back to you, but they never did.
The emails also contained verbiage such as “let us know your consent along with your shipping address and native contacts.”
In addition to the emails, he had a total of 11 calls with Dyson between October 25 and November 28.
I contacted Dyson to ask if I could do better.
It said the hair dryer was recycled due to a mistake. When I asked why it took so long to fix the problem, they offered no answer.
I’m pleased to inform you that I have sent you a new machine, as well as a four-pack of Dyson hair clips, valued at £35.
A Dyson spokesperson said: ‘As a result, this machine was incorrectly processed and recycled. We regret this error and the disappointment this may have caused.
“We have offered NM a new machine as a replacement and are reviewing our processes to ensure this does not happen again in the future.”
He finally received the filter cage he ordered, but he no longer needed it, so he tried to return it.
Dyson said to keep it and they would still refund you, but you just wrote to me to say the £18 hadn’t arrived after two weeks.
You told me you would contact them again and hopefully they won’t ignore you this time.
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