One email to us, and we handle the manufacturer.

Tell us what has happened, when it started, and send photographs or a short video if the fault is visible or audible. Include your order number if you have it to hand, though we can find it without.

We acknowledge the same working day, and we take it from there: we raise it with the manufacturer, translate the technical back and forth, chase the parts and keep you told. You deal with us, from the first email to the part arriving.

Where we need something from you, we will ask once and clearly rather than in five separate emails.

Warranty length varies by manufacturer and by component, and it would be misleading to state one figure here as though it applied to everything. So each product page carries its own: the length, what it covers, and the parts availability commitment.

That is deliberate. A single headline number on a policy page is the easiest place in ecommerce to be quietly inaccurate.

Across this category, the common exclusions are:

• Normal weathering. Untreated cedar and thermally modified timber both silver outdoors. That is the material behaving correctly, not a defect.
• Consumables. Filter cartridges, seals, gaskets and stove ropes wear out and are replaced as maintenance.
• Water chemistry damage. A plunge run outside the manufacturer's stated chemical range can suffer damage that no warranty covers.
• Installation not to specification. Most commonly a base that holds water against the structure, or an electrical supply that does not meet the stated requirement.
• Frost damage where the unit was not winterised as the manufacturer instructs.

We tell you all of this before you buy, not after something fails. It is why the guides on this site are as long as they are.

Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 goods must be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described. That right is against us as the retailer, it is free, and no manufacturer warranty can reduce it.

In practice we do not make you choose. If something has gone wrong we will take whichever route gets it fixed fastest, and work out between ourselves and the manufacturer who bears it.

Before a product is listed here we agree parts availability with the maker, and for how many years after a model is discontinued. A product whose maker cannot answer that question does not get listed, because a ten year purchase supported by a three year parts window is not a ten year purchase.

Out of warranty, we will still source the part and still make the call. It stops being free. It does not stop being our job.