We bought one unit of a duplex last year; it was a fixer-upper, bought, refurbished, and sold by a professional handyman. We got a builder’s warrantee for his construction. Most of the stuff worked well, but the lacquer/sealant on the bathroom tiles kept peeling up. He came in once a month after purchase to reseal it, then again today.
The peeling was so bad that he had to take up the entire lacquer layer, which came up in printer-paper sized sheets. He called the manufacturer of the lacquer seeking replacement, sending them a video he recorded of the peeling. The manufacturer refused, saying that the only reason it could come up like that was if we’d used harsh chemicals to clean it (we obviously hadn’t).
Then comes the weird part. When I asked why he didn’t let me talk to the agent, or ask me if I’d used any chemicals–and again, when I asked him to share the video–he said he could do that because that would make me his “agent.”
He claimed that if he helped me to cash in on the warrantee at all, as an “agent,” he would be creating an express warrantee beyond the guarantees in the purchase agreement a year ago. He said he couldn’t have even advised me to take video of the peeling myself before he started work (and now that the layer was completely peeled, I had no way to prove the damage to the manufacturer myself), because that would be offering me too much help.
Is what he was saying legally correct? It sounds utterly bizarre that something as simple as asking what cleaner I used would be so risky to his finances that he wouldn’t even do so.