Game Store Refusing to Honour Its Ts&Cs

shegs_81

This is absolutely scandalous and had my blood boiling, surely this is illegal :

Forum Thread

It's not his fault he's been savvy and found a loophole in their attempts to rip him off. We need to get some MSE muscle involved in this one as they can't be allowed to get away with it. Any legal experts out there?

shegs_81

By the way it's the post at 1:02pm I'm referring to and all subsequent ones.

intel

Er Whats the actual problem here.


:xmassign: :xmassign: :xmassign:

shegs_81

Basically, the Game Ts&Cs are that you can return anything, especially if it's unopened for a full refund within 10 days. If it's part of a bundle then you can get refunds for individual items you don't want, you just lose your discount.

The Game in Middlesborough would only sell this guy an Xbox 360 as part of a £620 package. Knowing what the Ts&Cs were he tried to return the games the next day and they wouldn't refund him, said those Ts&Cs didn't apply to stores only online. But it says in the Ts&Cs that it applies to stores. They must be in breach.

intel

I reckon thats a case for.. http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/

shegs_81

Apparently Game CS are scrambling to get their website Ts&Cs updated to close this loophole with regards to the XBox 360

IvanOpinion

I am guessing they must have already had problems with people stealing games by copying them. We bring this on ourselves and then complain when the obvious happens.

ivan

Stonk

No, that's not it at all, Ivan. Game's T&C's say they'll fully refund *unopened* games (which cannot have been copied). Presumably their refusal to refund *opened* games is to prevent theft by copying, which is totally reasonable, and it is not the problem here.

Here, they are refusing to refund a set of unopened games purchased the day before, a clear breach of their T&C's.

I still don't feel much sympathy for the guy though. He's spent £600-plus which he repeatedly states he cannot afford - on a gadget for playing games. He needs to think about priorities. I'm not knocking games consoles - I have a PS2 and it's fun, but I do know that in the grand scheme it is a trivial thing and I wouldn't have spent my last few pounds on it.

RightRevBod

I think that the bast bet here is to buy the bundle using a credit card. Then if Game refuse to honour their contractual obligations, just get the credit company to issue a charge back.

As the total is above £100, the credit card company is jointly liable with the retailer.

Outtathaway

I dunno about dame but in the store I work at game console bundles are treated as one purchase, so to return it, the whole package must be returned

IvanOpinion

Stonk wrote:

No, that's not it at all, Ivan. Game's T&C's say they'll fully refund *unopened* games (which cannot have been copied). Presumably their refusal to refund *opened* games is to prevent theft by copying, which is totally reasonable, and it is not the problem here.

Here, they are refusing to refund a set of unopened games purchased the day before, a clear breach of their T&C's.

A question I would ask is whether or not the T&C on their website apply to their stores as well? There are often different regulations for distance selling and purchases. The T&C on the site are related to people buying frmo the Web. They also have a 'discretionary clause' in there (I wonder how much of a cop-out that is?).

The whole thread on the other board is about people trying to scam the system anyway by flouting a loophole. Only a few days ago people were saying, very vociferously, that if something was part of a package then you can get your money back by returning the full package. I wonder if that decision has changed when it suits your purposes to return part of a package. If I had have been the manager I would have refused to do a return without the entire package.

The only losers in situations like this are the public. They do their best to cheat the system, they lie and they swindle and they run crying when the loophole is closed. No sympathy for anybody who relies on this sort of thing .. that is why CDs, DVDs Games etc. are so dear in this country

On the 'unopened' front, there is a very popular kid around our way whose father runs a packaging plant ... guess what, nearly every weekend you can see him with a carrier bag of games .. oh, and they have all been neatly resealed .. nice little earner for him apparently. Its wonderful how irresponsible parents can be when it comes to money .. teaching their children to lie and steal.

ivan