can i get a refund from orange??

northernstar035

Hi, hoping i can get some advice.

On Sunday of this week my daughter and I went to purchase a mobile phone from orange. We picked one out and asked to look at it, we asked the sales assistant about if it had speaker volume control as I am partially deaf (we told her this) she told us to look in the manual, my daughter found the control and asked if we could try it out. We were told this was not possible as the phone had to be activated and that all mobiles had the same volume control. We purchased the phone thinking we could return it if it was not suitable!! BIG MISTAKE

When we got home, i found that I was not able to hear on this phone so we returned to the shop the following day. The same sales assistant told us they had a no returns policy. We asked to speak to a manager but none were in the shop. Another sales assistant came over and we asked does this mean we have to keep buying phones till we find one that I could hear on she said yes!!!!! We stated that we had asked about the volume and therefore should get at least an exchange at this point we were called liars and told to leave the shop!!! It was soo embarrassing!! Another customer approached us and told us to phone customer services which we did with no results apart from being told there was a no returns policy!
There are no signs in the shop aboout returns nor did the sales assistant tell us this!
Do I have any rights on this matter???

mc33033

Hi northernstar035,

This might be a reasonably difficult case, I would maybe go down the lines of

1) You made your requirements known to them that you were partially deaf and required to check the phone first, they gave you the advice that all the phones had the same volume. That could probably be proved to be false.
2) SOGA requires you to have reasonable opportunity to examine goods before you can accept them - you clearly didn't till your activated the phone. You still may not have accepted the phone - you need to act quickly to reject it.
3) Therefore you may be able to reject under SOGA with the breach being goods not fit for purpose made known at time of sale.

HTH

kingofherts

difficult to envoke soga on this one IMHO, the exact same phone may be fine for another partially deaf person. Plus you are going to get a pretty level max volume from all handsets so chances are if this phone is no good then pretty much all of them will be the same. Unless the phone is faulty its fit for purpose which is making and recieving calls etc

pinkshoes

If you get no where with the mobile phone shop (write to them recorded delivery stating it's not fit for purpose), then you could buy an induction loop that works with phones. Something like this:
http://www.emptech.info/product_details.php?ID=1901

robpw2

which shop was this beacuase phones 4 u and cpw will take the phone out the box to demonstrate ..so will vodaphone

northernstar035

Thanks for the advice which I will try!
We went to Carphone Warehouse afterwards and were able to try and then bought a phone as I needed one! Carphone Warehouse also said that had we bought the phone with out trying it they would of replaced or refunded it even if it was on orange!!!

isplumm

Hi,

Could you invoke the disability act here .... Orange need to provide the same level of service to all their customers & by not allowing you to check phone out, they haven't provided that service. I could of course (& I suspect I am) .... be barking up completely the wrong tree ....

I assume that you didn't shout & scream ...

Is it a pay as you go phone .... if so ... sell on ebay .... but I would ring Orange & ask for complaints number .... I would also write a letter to the branch & copy the MD explaining what happened ... is there a disability newspaper around - they might be interested in your treatment .... kick up a fuss ... don't accept treatment like that.

Mark

Door_knockers_will_die

I would also suggest ringing Orange. I have been with them since they started up and have nothing but good to say about their online customer services.

I do believe that they treat contract customers like myself better than PAYG though. I don't use the shops because they are less helpful - in the past I have been told by a manager to go to Carphone Warehouse if I didn't like what they were offering. That could have lost them a long time customer.

If you don't get any joy on the phone ask if a manager will phone you back, and tell them how unhelpful the shop staff were.

northernstar035

Hi just to let you all know, I emailed orange on the following email ad [EMAIL="executive.office@orange-ftgroup.com"]executive.office@orange-ftgroup.com[/EMAIL] They replied straight back and are sending postage for the phone and a full refund!!!
Trading standards told us we had no legal rights!

mc33033

northernstar035 wrote: »

Hi just to let you all know, I emailed orange on the following email ad [EMAIL="executive.office@orange-ftgroup.com"]executive.office@orange-ftgroup.com[/EMAIL] They replied straight back and are sending postage for the phone and a full refund!!!
Trading standards told us we had no legal rights!

Excellent result northernstar - dissapointing result from trading standards, what area were you speaking with?

Door_knockers_will_die

Well done, glad it worked out.