How I took AO to court

As the reader may already have noted, I have spent the last ten years since my husband Martin’s death in an almost constant state of battle. Without further ado I will now move on to the next challenge that came my way. One evening in October 2022 I realised that my kitchen floor was swelling and discovered a silent leak in the kitchen sink cabinet. I could see that the leak had been going on since the electric goods vendor AO had installed a new dishwasher in my home. I managed to prevent the disaster from getting even bigger but I was still sitting with a damaged kitchen unit and floor that AO did not want to pay for. I had to go through ADR but they were utterly useless, giving me no hints at all as to the sort of evidence I should provide, and taking five months to deliberate. I had to chase them and was just told I didn’t have sufficient evidence. I thought about it long and hard and realised that I did have witnesses and dated photographs. I then decided to take AO to court. They did not budge and offered all sorts of ridiculous arguments in favour of their ‘professionalism’. They claimed my floor had already been in a poor condition at the time of the installation of my dishwasher. In fact, they said it had already been damaged from leaks when they installed a cooker earlier in the year, which I didn’t even know was through them as they used a third party dealer. Thankfully, I was able to take screenshots of photographs in my photo album which thus gave me the exact dates to prove AO wrong. Luckily, I had photographed my cat Robin in the kitchen earlier that year! Below is an edited version of the narrative I offered the court. 

The ordeal lasted almost two years and it was all very stressful. It was difficult to get the contractor to offer a quotation, it was difficult to get them to come and do the work, it was impossible to communicate with ADR, it was difficult to communicate with court, it was difficult to formulate all the counter arguments and to anticipate further lies from AO’s representatives (including their in-house lawyer), it was difficult to collect all the evidence and witness statements and create a ‘bundle’ for court, and finally, I was also worried about the hearing as I did not know how I would present myself there because of all my health conditions. In the end, a video hearing was offered. But just a week ahead of the hearing, AO decided to give in and pay the money. I wish I had asked for some money to cover all the stress and time I spent dealing with the case! But I was new to this kind of problem and was just going along with whatever instructions I was given, one step at a time.

1. On the night of 28th October 2022 discovered that the connection to my dishwasher was leaking into a hole in the floor of the kitchen sink cabinet above floor level. It had been quietly and inconspicuously leaking for a month into the space underneath and had thus destroyed the foundations of the cabinet as well as my floor boards - the MDF soaked up the moisture that gathered there, but the water also spread underneath the floor boards. 
2. In a surge of adrenaline and a superhuman effort, I pulled up the soggy floor boards myself, this was hard work for a disabled older woman but I didn’t have a choice since the water was quickly reaching the hallway from underneath the boards, conducted by the foam underlay. I could not have physically done this unless the boards had been as soggy as they were, and they easily broke in two because of the moisture.
3. In order to access the boards and prevent damage to the foundations of other cabinets, I had to pull out the dishwasher. Because the water inlet hose was too short and I was struggling with the bulky appliance on my own, the back panel the hose was attached to came off in the process. No water leaked at this point since I had already turned the water off. Also, if there had been such a leak, it would have flooded the floor from above, not from below, and AO has already admitted that the floor was damaged from below. This kind of leak would have been swiftly noticeable and wouldn’t have destroyed the entire floor. Even more importantly, the panel would not have come lose if the hose had been sufficiently long. Obviously, it’s not supposed to detach when you pull the dishwasher out for cleaning and service, and a professional installer would have notified me about this potential problem due to the hose being too short. But I was not informed about the problem. So when AO is blaming me for having caused the valve to come off, they are really blaming themselves. Note, that there was no internal problem with the appliance and I was therefore obliged to pay for it myself - this does not mean I caused the leak, which occurred elsewhere. (That’s a logical fallacy.)
4. The water hose was 1.7 m which is actually less than the distance from the dishwasher back panel to the pipe under the sink, and it was therefore stretched to its limits around a corner and other obstacles, while also making a kinked U-turn at the connection point. An expert installer should have realised this but the problem with the distance has not been admitted by any of the AO staff, who instead keep denying liability by putting the blame on me. How anyone could damage such a valve that easily if there was no prior issue, is a mystery to me! AO has gone as far as to claim that I continued using the short hose, but this is not true! I believe the leak in the sink cabinet occurred because the hose was too short and too tautly stretched, and the connection was not screwed on tightly. I quickly purchased a longer hose that was installed by the Bosch engineer from N a few days later when he also fitted a new panel (valve). While he agreed AO had caused the leak, alas, it’s not clear from the invoice where the leak was coming from, and he may have been biased. I did not show ADR the invoice.
5. There was no water from the dishwasher since I had already disconnected it from the water inlet and held a basin under it when I detached the hose. AO’s claim that this action caused a flooding of the floor is therefore null and void: there has been no flooding or physical damage at the location of the dishwasher other than some water that had spread there underneath the floorboards from the sink unit a distance away. This was dealt with by swiftly removing the floorboards.
6. Through my swift actions, I averted a complete disaster so the other cabinets didn’t also start to collapse, but the sink cabinet was destroyed. I contacted my landlord the next day to discuss their policies for kitchen repairs (which I obviously had to pay for myself). The entire laminate flooring was also destroyed because the water spread very rapidly along the foam underlay, threatening to reach the hallway. 
7. ADR claimed that evidence was insufficient because I had not contacted an emergency plumber, but this is an assumption and I have since obtained witness statements. It was the middle of the night and I am a non-native widowed and disabled lady without practical skills. I was in shock and pretty clueless, and ended up contacting all sorts of people, including my handyman. A couple of days later officers from the maintenance office at my housing association came to witness the damage. A representative from a kitchen supplier also came to discuss the repairs. It would seem that of all the people I have showed the damage to, strangely, only AO and their staff and ADR are somehow failing to understand how things connect logically and how the leak occurred. 
8. I obviously also immediately contacted AO via email to discuss the issue and contrary to what they are claiming, I did send them many photographs depicting all the damage to my cabinets and floorboards. In my iPhone photo album they are automatically dated, so I have now included the dates (I did not have these dates for ADR). Note that the floor itself in the cabinet is not that damaged, and that’s because of the hole that was right underneath said water hose connection.
9. AO sent two (biased) engineers who appeared to make a report in accordance with my statements, and admitted guilt. They did not suggest that I had caused the leak myself. Instead, they indicated that they understood the cause of the leak as coming from the dishwasher water inlet in the sink cabinet. Contrary to what AO claims, there are not ‘numerous connections’, only two, and the second one had not been tampered with. The engineers asked me to talk on the phone to an unprofessional sounding lady who claimed to represent the AO complaints department. (I was thus forced to speak to a lady with a painfully shrill voice although I had explained that I don’t use the telephone due to a severe hearing impairment, but I was assured it was worth the sacrifice). The lady said the complaint would be filed and the papers sent to me, yet she rejected the claim shortly afterwards without explanation. I had to chase the matter repeatedly until I was told to turn to ADR. I submitted evidence to ADR but I did not expect it to be such a difficult and treacherous enterprise. In reality it was a complex and entirely unguided process that overwhelmed me. It did not occur to me at that point to include the dates on all my photographs and to obtain witness statements to demonstrate AO’s guilt.
10. Unfortunately I had to wait eight months to obtain a quote for the replacement of the sink unit from the maintenance contractor but as soon as I had it, I issued a claim to ADR as directed by AO. AO came up with many ludicrous arguments, including the false assumption that I was still using the same short hose (1.7 m) that had originally been installed. I don’t know why they would have mentioned the hose if they themselves didn’t believe it was really too short, and that I was ‘stupidly’ still using it, which I was not. AO has claimed that there are ‘numerous’ connections that could cause the leak, but the only other connection above the hole in the cabinet had not been tampered with in the last 30 days. In their ADR defence they also claimed that floor level flooding could not damage anything above floor level, but this is a silly notion since MDF soaks up water. Clearly they fail to grasp that there was a hole in the cabinet floor and space underneath where the water collected and had nowhere to go but into the MDF cabinet and the floor. Because of the hole, the water did not overflow and leak out of the cabinet as one would have expected, instead it slowly made all the MDF soggy. I have demonstrated the collapsing foundations of my cabinet with dated photos. My housing association would obviously have been aware of any previous issues, and in addition, the house was built in 2015 so there would not at this point be such dramatic ‘wear’. AO claimed that I would not be able to prove a leak that had already been resolved, whatever that means, but in reality it had not been resolved at all, since there was still water/damp inside the cabinet in the space under the floor that I could not reach. I believe the AO engineers photographed this hole. The need to rebuild the unit due to unresolved dampness was confirmed by the building contractor I employed.
11. I have obtained a witness statement from the repair officer at my housing association . In addition to photos that I already presented to both AO and ADR, I am also able to demonstrate social media content about the incident and the invoice for the new hose. ADR, who acted in a very disinterested manner, took five months to deliberate and even forced me to chase their decision. They opined that I should have had an emergency plumber ‘as evidence’. I had other witnesses I could have supplied, but I was never given the opportunity, nor was I allowed to add more documents. It seemed incredibly unfair that AO got the last word, and that only I had to supply evidence and photographs, not AO. At any rate, a plumber would not have removed my soggy floor boards! I did not know where to get help in the middle of the night but it was not difficult to figure out that I needed to disconnect the dishwasher as a first measure. I messaged my handyman who advised me to turn ‘stop cock off’ and contact the landlord. It is not difficult to imagine that this leak would have taken a month to manifest as a silent flood seeping underneath the floor boards. The water was dripping into a hole in the cabinet floor about 10 cm above ground level, and the space underneath filled up inconspicuously and effortlessly seeped along the foam underlay under the boards from there. It’s common sense and does not take a specialist to imagine that the process of silent drips soaking the entire floor to a breaking point would have taken the time I claim it took, that is, one month. The many photos of the floor boards from the night and the next day show obvious water damage to the entire floor. The causation is evident since the hose was installed a month prior to my discovery and I have ample photographic evidence of the kitchen before and after the leak started to show, with dates. 
12. Please note that I have supplied quotes for the work that needed to be done from the housing association’s contractor. (Note that I also requested other kitchen improvements that do NOT have anything to do with the leak and were paid for separately). I have had to purchase new laminate flooring that due to delays and poor health, has yet to be installed. 
13. I wish to underline that the broken panel (valve) in the dishwasher is a separate issue and not to be confused with the actual leak in the kitchen sink cabinet. AO has used the broken panel as an argument in favour of their innocence when in fact it is far from the site of the source of the leak and the flooded sink cabinet, and the cabinets around the dishwasher did not need to be replaced. Had the leak started there, then the cabinets on this side of the kitchen would have been severely affected by the damp - they were not. There was no actual leak from the dishwasher, and I never said there was. The panel nevertheless broke as a consequence of the flooding since I had to tear up the floor underneath it when water was spreading along the floor underlay. I could see the valve could leak, so I held a container under it when I removed the hose. The valve also broke as a consequence of the installed water hose that was simply not long enough for the distance (i.e. 1.7 m). The measured distance is almost 1.9 m. It follows that any effort to pull out the dishwasher with a hose that’s really much too short, will inevitably cause damage to the appliance. AO claims their engineer installed the dishwasher to satisfaction on 29th September 2022 but they have no evidence of professional workmanship, nor of alleged previous leaks in my kitchen. In an email from AO, they even claimed that the engineers had taken photographs of my floor on the day of the installation and that it was already damaged from underneath. Why would they have photographed my floor? I did not observe them do this. I do not believe they have such (dated) photographs. I can prove with my own photographs that the floor still looked intact on 6th October 2022. AO cannot guarantee that their employers are 100% free from professional negligence as they would be robots in this case, and it’s a ridiculous argument in defence of their alleged innocence.
14. Interestingly, the same year, AO also sold me a faulty tumble dryer, a real fire hazard. While I was refunded eventually, it took them months to collect it. To me, the additional experience confirms the company as an unreliable and dishonest business with poor quality control and poorly trained staff. My experience is that their smiley logo is a travesty of solid customer service, and ADR was not a user- and customer friendly mediator. I would like to draw special attention to AO’s complaints process, which seemed designed to deceive the customer. I was made to believe that I could easily make a complaint and all would be well, but it would seem that it was all smoke and mirrors. In reality, AO did not appear to have any intention of taking responsibility for poor workmanship. I refused mediation because I cannot settle for less than the full amount they owe me for costly repairs. They nevertheless came to me with an offer of 1/3 which would seem to be a strange admittance of guilt without the admittance of responsibility. Their point of view was that ‘we should avoid wasting valuable court time’, but they are willing to do just that, nevertheless, and have no consideration for the infinite trouble all this has caused me, the disabled elderly customer, who was simply left with no option but to take them to court. I would like to see the ‘evidence’ of alleged ‘tests’, the alleged photo of my floor, and the alleged phone call made to the visiting engineer. So far, AO has failed to produce ANY evidence in defence of their innocence.
15. I’m asking AO to pay for 1 kitchen sink cabinet unit & installation, 1 kitchen laminate floor & installation (inc. underlay, beading etc.), and the dishwasher repairs. It amounts to roughly £1500. Considering the stress, worry, declining health and practical problems they have caused me over a period of two years, it’s very little money for a big company who seem to gladly use their resources on dogged denial of liability and an ever changing narrative that doesn’t add up to any kind of evidence at all. All this has been an absolutely horrendous and inhumane experience for me.       

It’s surprisingly difficult to photograph this kind of damage to the property. The first photograph shows the new kitchen. Since repairs had to be done, I decided to renew the kitchen cabinet doors and the worktop as well. The photos of the damage are not dated but remember that you can always screenshot photographs in your album and acquire an easy-to-read date that way. Also remember to photograph and even film the so-called ‘engineers’ that come to your house to install appliances! These companies will never admit to damage unless you can shove their incompetence in their face.