In the United States it is called Breach of Warranty to what we in Spanish would call breach of the guarantee. That is, Breach of Warranty means the violation of the agreement between the buyer and the company that manufactured the product. This may be related to product content and / or quality.
Guarantee
Guarantees are promises with legal value and can turn against whoever offers them. A guarantee can exist in different ways; It can be expressed verbally during the negotiation or it can be written. It is always recommended to make a written statement, since in case of any inconvenience, the written guarantee can be presented as a proof, while there is no evidence of a guarantee expressed verbally. The warranties generally state that the product is free of defects for at least one year after being purchased.
The legal aspect
Federal law in the United States protects consumers against the purchase of defective products, and if you have had to repeatedly repair the product or vehicle, you may be entitled to take legal action.
Defective products Breach of warranty
In other articles we have told you about manufacturing faults in some cars and the possibility of receiving a refund or a new unit to replace the one that was defective but, what is the difference between the breach of warranty and a defective product ? Depending on the product and the company that manufactures or commercializes it, what we buy may be covered by a one, two, five, ten year warranty, or it may be a lifetime guarantee, the latter known in English as Lifetime. Warranty. In most cases, the guarantees last one year. These contracts imply that in case of any defect or failure, from the moment in which the product is purchased, and during the period of the guarantee, the buyer is entitled to receive a replacement of the product.
In contrast, when we refer to defective products (or product liability in English), we refer to a product that harmed or hurt us, regardless of whether when the event occurred, the product was still under warranty or not. That is, if, for example, we bought a washing machine that exploded and scared us, hurt us psychologically, or hurt us physically, we could have the right to demand compensation. If we bought a car and had an accident because of a vehicle failure or the airbag was defective and damaged us, we are also entitled to demand compensation.
Defective product lawsuits can often be turned into collective lawsuits, since in many cases, there are manufacturing faults that affect a whole series of the production of an object or vehicle. On the other hand, the non-fulfillment of the guarantee usually deals with individual cases, where a unit turns out to be faulty or not working and it is a subject who claims for it.