Know your consumer rights.

robowen · 8 February 2006 at 1:20PM

There have been several posts recently, where the OP has requested to know their rights when dealing with problems with goods.

The sale of goods act clearly sets out the consumer rights and also the sellers rights should a problem arise.
Here is a link to the government website 'consumer rights' with all the details.
From there you can navigate through Consumer Direct,Office of Fair Trading (OFT), Trading standards, Sale of Goods Act - faulty goods, Scams, Rip-off tip-off, Financial scams, Make a consumer complaint, Product recalls. The list goes on !.

Trading standards issues are quite common in this board. From the first link you can navigate to find the nearest Trading standards in your area by entering your postcode.

From there you can navigate to all sorts of other information pages.

Here is a link to the 'Sale of Goods Act, Faulty Goods' webpage.
Click on the links down the right hand side to find out more information.
This is a good one to print out for future reference.

Hope this helps.
rob

Glad · 12 February 2006 at 2:28PM

nice thread rob

I've bookmarked it

tw0906blue · 15 March 2006 at 4:55PM

Thanks Rob - I am struggling with Comet atm who supplied me with a wide screen tv that has broken after 20 months! They want to charge me £60 to come look at it and then if they say it is a "major" problem I can request a refund and they will repair/replace the tv for me. Outragious!

Can't see anything on the sites though that baddress this outragious charge, so am contacting Trading Standards. I have toe EU directive on sale of goods Act too.

:eek:

:-)

Gorgeous_George · 3 May 2006 at 10:31PM

My step daughter bought a bath off eBay. After signing for it on delivery along with numerous other items for the bathroom, the bath was stored in an unused room of the house. When they got around to fitting it (3 weeks after delivery) a crack was discovered when they removed the protective film.

The seller has refused to replace the bath. Is the small claims court the next course of redress or is it too late and just an expensive lesson?

GG

robowen · 4 May 2006 at 2:57PM

" Q13. What does the "reversed burden of proof" mean for the consumer?

It means that for the first six months the consumer need not produce any evidence that a product was inherently faulty at the time of sale. If a consumer is seeking any other remedy the burden of proof remains with him/her.

In such a case, the retailer will either accept there was an inherent fault, and will offer a remedy, or he will dispute that it was inherently flawed. If the latter, when he inspects the product to analyse the cause, he may, for example, point out impact damage or stains that would be consistent with it having been mistreated in such a way as to bring about the fault.

This reversal of the usual burden of proof only applies when the consumer is seeking a repair or replacement. After the first six months the onus of proof is again on the consumer. "

I would contact Trading Standards.
There are standard letters you can print out and change the details to fit your circumstances. The seller may respond better to a letter stating your intentions to pursue this matter.
If you paid for the items with a credit card, I would contact them too. You could do a charge back on your card.

rob

G_Skipper · 18 July 2006 at 9:17AM

I heard a radio interview with an MEP who stated that there is a 2-year automatic guarantee on electrical goods in the EU. Having just chucked away an 18-month-old radio, I was a bit surprised, and now I wonder how places like Comet and Domestic and General can get away with selling a warranty described as an extra year when, in fact, you have already bought it with the goods! However, I don't know if the guarantee is through the retailer or the manufacturer or both. It would be nice if Martin's Money Tips could give us a quick run-down on how this law applies and how to use it.

kev1n3 · 5 August 2006 at 1:31PM

G_Skipper wrote:

I heard a radio interview with an MEP who stated that there is a 2-year automatic guarantee on electrical goods in the EU. Having just chucked away an 18-month-old radio, I was a bit surprised, and now I wonder how places like Comet and Domestic and General can get away with selling a warranty described as an extra year when, in fact, you have already bought it with the goods! However, I don't know if the guarantee is through the retailer or the manufacturer or both. It would be nice if Martin's Money Tips could give us a quick run-down on how this law applies and how to use it.

can anyone shed any light on this?

14 months ago I purchased a Samsung video camera from Dixons. (£499.00) 2 weeks ago it stopped recording. After many calls to the store I purchased it from they are sticking to there guns by quoting I had the option to take out a extended warrantee. i’m getting very frustrated with them. Any sound advise or links would be great.

Kev

Ok Guys.. i just found this link. seems pretty informative.

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/03/3&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

yummymummy79 · 9 December 2006 at 10:46PM

Just to add to the European 2 year warranty issue, before you get too excited it is important to note that this wasn't implemented by the UK (as you can see at the bottom of the article in the link).

This is because our Sale of Goods Act rights last for up to 6 years anyway so the consumer already has more rights than this Directive would have given. It was mainly brought in to give parts of Europe with rubbish consumer rights a bit more of a level playing field with the likes of the UK.

So please don't rush out and use this as a reason for taking something back to Comet/Currys etc as you will be wrong and might look a bit silly! Stick with the tried and tested Sale of Goods Act

Greenwellies_2 · 3 January 2007 at 6:13PM

Hi, the link at the bottom of the OP doesn't work anymore.

GW

lalaberet · 4 January 2007 at 3:27PM

Hi there

I bought my son an internet browser for his Nintendo DS for Christmas from play.com. Unfortunately, they do 2 versions, one for the DS Lite and one for the standard DS and I inadvertently ordered the wrong one. Before my son had realised my mistake he'd taken the cellophane wrapping of it.

Play.com won't refund on opened items since they state "Once an item has been removed from its original packaging or it has been used it invalidates our returns policy". I'm assuming that it's within their rights to state this policy but I just wanted to check before attempting to sell it on eBay and re-purchase the correct item.

Any advice anyone?

bluep · 6 January 2007 at 4:34PM

Hi - we have a fridge freezer that we love and was a real bargain half-price. Unfortunately the freezer bit broke 2 months ago and was duly fixed (it needed flushing and regassing or something like that) under the warrenty. The same thing has just reocurred and and the engineer is coming out on Monday. It's electrolux so a large company.

We would really rather he fixed it than get a refund as a) we can't find a similar item at a similar price now and b) it has a brilliant pull out separate middle fridge drawer for big items that we just haven't seen on any other fridge freezers.

However, the 12 month warrenty runs out mid -feb and I am worried that if they fix it and then it goes wrong again in the next couple of months then we are screwed. If this happens, would I have a legal basis for insisting that they fix it again/refund us after the 12 months expired as the same fault has reocurred and they have effectively failed to fix it?

Know your consumer rights.

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