YOUR CONSUMER QUERIES:A READER called Rita bought a Samsung RSH fridge-freezer four years ago. It stopped working more than a month ago. "It had a warranty for two years but as a gesture of goodwill Samsung sent someone out to have a look at it," she writes. "I was told it needed a new compressor for €280 and this wasn't covered," she says.

She arranged for the repair and the new compressor was fitted two weeks later. “The fridge-freezer still did not work and I didn’t pay the engineer. The engineer took it away to a workshop and tested it and said that it was leaking gas and was beyond repair,” she continues.

First Samsung offered her €284 as a part-refund. She called saying she was unhappy and was told by customer service that this was a final settlement and she had only 10 days to accept it.

These fridges are selling here for €1,200.

She persisted and the company upped its offer to €334. She has now bought a new fridge, which cost more than €900, so she is worse off to the tune of more than €600.

To be fair to Samsung, it did not have to offer this reader anything, although she is right to expect that a product which had a selling price of €1,200 should last for more than four years.

We checked with the National Consumer Agency to see exactly what rights she had and, while it says that a product of this nature should indeed last for a good bit longer than the warranty period, it does not have a specific life span for any particular product.