Painters Damaged My Front Door's Smart Lock. Do They Have To Pay For A Replacement?
Location: Ohio
I just paid to have sections of my house repainted. I work from home, and at one point during the day, I heard a loud crash at my front door. I'm not sure what happened, maybe a ladder fell over. But after the painting crew left, I did a quick inspection and noticed that the number pad on my front door's smart lock was cracked and there was a section missing (the whole area around the number 4). It definitely wasn't broken the day before. Some of the underlying circuitry is now exposed, there are sharp edges around the missing section, and it looks really ugly since the number pad is bronze and the underlying electronic pad is bright white.
I told the owner, and he said he'd take a look. We did a walk around, and he said that since the lock is old, they normally only do some portion of the replacement cost due to depreciation, since I'd be buying a brand new lock and that's not worth the same as the old lock. Plus the lock technically still works. The same model of lock would cost about $300 today. He originally offered me $50, then went up to $100. He also argued that if you dented a Mercedes, you wouldn't pay to replace the whole car, would you? I said no, you'd pay to fix the dent, but there's no way to just replace the keypad on this lock because they don't sell replacement keypads, and I don't even know if it's really feasible to swap them out anyway.
I'm not a lawyer, but Google searches seem to suggest that they have to pay to give me an equivalent lock. I found one on sale for $200, but there's nothing else out there that's comparable in style and features that's less than that. There's not really a market for used smart locks! Plus it's going to take me time to uninstall the old one, reinstall the new one, and reprogram it with all the codes for friends and family that have access to our house. So I'm just curious, is there any merit to this depreciation argument? For reference, the lock has a lifetime warranty for parts, but that doesn't cover accidental damage. So in theory this lock should have been a "buy it for life" type of purchase.
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