<p>FWIW, Restoration Hardware is a generally reputable company that’s been around since at least the early 1990s, maybe longer. They don’t make their own stuff. So this is like getting mad at the local hardware store for selling you an inferior medicine cabinet. I think they sold that cabinet in good faith. I’m sympathetic, but I’m not sure you are suing the right guys.</p>
<p>Any possibility of going to something like a custom cabinet place or a second hand furniture store and seeing if you’ll be able to find a set of replacement doors?</p>
<p>Are you sure this door is any heavier than average? You don’t feel the weight when the door is held on, but most are rather heavy. My cabinets all have mirrors. Mirrors are heavy. Is there something that makes yours extra heavy? I’m just asking because replacing the hinge just might be fine if you can find a heavy duty one. Pick and choose your battles. If you can fix it for $20 then you have to decide if the “principle” you are fighting for is worth the aggravation of the fight.</p>
<p>I argued with Nissan over a broken seat track weld. Seat tracks should not break at 45,000 miles, and they had lots of complaints and it was $1000 job. That kind of thing I fought. Yours, I might let go considering the low repair cost. If unrepairable however, then I would fight. Good luck, don’t make yourself nuts over it.</p>
<p>It’s out of warranty (I assume) and even if it was in warranty, it’d be warranted by the manufacturer - not the store (I assume). It sounds as if you already won’t trust this cabinet again no matter what’s done with the hinges at this point.</p>
<p>I think you should just get rid of it and replace it with another cabinet and put all of this behind you. It’s not worth any more angst and if it’s true that it’s out of warranty, and especially if you have no paperwork showing what the warranty is, my guess is that you’d lose any lawsuit anyway.</p>
<p>On the replacement cabinet, pay close attention to the warranty, which company manufactures the cabinet, whether they’re an accessible company for warranty issues (i.e. if they’re some obscure manufacturer in China, they might not be accessible regardless of what they’re warranty is). Obviously, pay close attention to the mechanical design as opposed to the decorative design. </p>
<p>Again, there are a lot of ‘home furnishings’ that focus more on the styling than they do the mechanical design. I’ve rejected a number of things that might ‘look nice’ but that have mechanical design issues in my mind.</p>
<p>I’m sure you can take them to small claims court. You will making your case to a judge (or some court official) not a jury … so you’re not likely to get them to override the law. What is your case? I’ll play judge</p>
<p>Did the item fail within the warranty period? “No, it failed after the warranty”</p>
<p>Is this store responsible for the warranty? “No, the manufacturer is”</p>
<p>Did you contact the store to try to resolve the problem? Yes</p>
<p>Did they blow you off or did they try to help? “They refused to replace the cabinet or pay for replacement parts.”</p>
<p>Please answer the question I asked? “They did not blow me off they offered to sell me replacement parts for the parts that broke.”</p>
<p>So help me understand your case. You bought an item from a store, the warranty expired, the store is not responsible for the warranty, you went back to the store for help, while not holding the warranty for the product they offered to help fix the problem. Is that right? “yes”</p>
<p>Why do you think the store owes you a refund? “Because I believe the store sold me an inferior product and should back the products they sell even if they are past warranty”</p>
<p>So then do you believe stores are responsible to replace any item as long as the owner thinks was a reasonable length of time for it to last overriding the warranty? “yes”</p>
<p>My suggestion … run this by your closest friend … not the one who always sides with you but who gives you a straight answer when you ask them a question. Ask them if they think you have a legal case in this situation however crappy the outcome of the purchase was.</p>
<p>If you paid with a credit card like AmEx, the credit card extends your warranty, and you might be able to get it covered that way. Testooration harware’s site says they warranty for 3 years:
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<p><a href=“http://images.restorationhardware.com/content/contract/Contract_TermsAndConditions.pdf[/url]”>http://images.restorationhardware.com/content/contract/Contract_TermsAndConditions.pdf</a> That may be a contract for a bigger project, but it still addresses warranty</p>
<p>Unfortunately, if you cannot prove that it was defective or that the company is failing to honor a warranty, what grounds would you have to sue in small claims court? What proof do you have that it was defective? Can you prove you didnt mistreat it in some way? Can you find an expert who will testify that it was defective and should not have broken? How much will you sue for? Do you have additional damage to the bathroom? Its probably a waste of time and court costs, IMO</p>
<p>Read here and see if anyone else has had a similar problem [Top</a> 124 Complaints and Reviews about Restoration Hardware](<a href=“http://www.consumeraffairs.com/homeowners/restoration.html]Top”>Top 416 Restoration Hardware Reviews)</p>
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<p>Unfortunately the technology does not exist (on every cellphone in the world) to take a picture and insert it or attach it to an email. 
That would require human activity.</p>
<p>Thanks for all your advice. I think I could make a good case that the product was defective, but I can’t be sure that I would win in small claims court and, even if I did, RH would probably just not pay the judgment. So I’ve given up on getting anything out of them.</p>
<p>My contractor is coming by to look at installing another cabinet (that I will NOT buy from RH!)</p>
<p>IF you won in small claims court and RH didn’t willingly pay, you would need to have an additional proceeding to collect, such as a garnishment which takes more time.</p>
<p>Personally, I often don’t think these matters are worth pursuing, especially since there was no extended warranty given on this item. Glad you’re moving on with your contractor. When you make your next purchase, look to see if the seller has replacement parts (tho of course no guarantee how long they will remain in stock). My sister bought windows for her newly constructed home and several have broken–no replacement parts are available.</p>
<p>If it were me, I would be relentless and go up the food chain, as far as the CEO, if necessary. I just keep asking to speak to the next supervisor, and the next, and the next…</p>
<p>I had every part of my out of warranty 42" Samsung plasm TV replaced that way (they couldn’t pin point the problem from testing all the bits and bobs.) so I effectively got a brand new TV. </p>
<p>It does take time and perseverance.</p>
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Me too! I get crazed about this sort of thing, even though I realize it’s not necessarily a smart use of my time and energy. I just had a two day knock-down, drag-out fight with Walmart over a $24 error, and H thought I was nuts to bother, but I won, got myself a $25 gift card to boot, and felt great about it. In fact, the more awful Walmart was to deal with–dropped calls, unanswered phones, passing the buck, insisting I had to drive 30 minutes to the store to present my credit card before they could process a credit–the more determined I became. Sometimes a little bit of justice restores the soul.</p>
<p>I have been known to pursue small amounts on principle as well. Depends on how much time and energy I’m willing to expend.</p>
<p>The problem is that companies tempt fate with silly product design. We have a Mitsubishi rear projection widescreen TV era 2003 that has rarely been used - a few times a month at best in the last few years. It died on us. Called the repair service and they came and looked at it. $400 to fix. Failed seal of the liquid coolant that cools the picture tubes dripped on motherboard and shorted something. </p>
<p>If you ever saw what a rear projection TV looks like on inside, let me tell you. Laughable. Three PC sized motherboards in a big plastic tray. Then another tray that holds the three picture lamps and coolant. The tech took everything to the shop where new seals were installed and the motherboard repaired. </p>
<p>But the design was awful. Random logic boards sticking out at odd angles. More cables than the CERN Hadron collider or whatever. If you can’t design a product properly, DON’T SELL IT. </p>
<p>Apparently they did not learn. The next generation of rear projection DLP’s was even worse. We finally had to come to LCD.</p>
<p>Compare a budget dishwasher’s internal with a Miele or Bosch or similar. Amazing.</p>
<p>People don’t want to pay for quality.</p>