Argos and secondhand goods sold as new

Doc_N

Anyone else coming across this problem with Argos?

Seems to be happening on a pretty regular basis. You know the sort of thing - you buy an item, assuming it's new, then you get it home and find it's already been used.

Argos just seem to regard this as almost normal practice, offering a tiny fraction of the price back as a 'goodwill gesture' in the form of a voucher.

Anyone else finding this increasingly common with Argos?

fluffnutter

Hmm, if this happened and it was clear you were expecting new goods and received second-hand goods instead, you'd be entitled to full recompense, and not a fraction of the price so anyone who's being fobbed off needs to stand up for themselves.

Secondly, what does 'regular basis' mean? Has this happened to you? A lot?

Azari

There are two aspects to this:

1) What are you entitled to? You are certainly entitled to a full refund or replacement with a new item. If they offer you some compensation instead, it's up to you whether or not you accept that.

2) Are Argos behaving illegally? You could report the matter to trading standards. If it has happened more than once you should definitely do this.

s_b

Anyone else finding this increasingly common with Argos?

hapened to me twice last year
a payg phone with a £10 voucher that was used and the phone had already been used too
the other was a light switch that had been used but i didnt realise until i found it didnt dim right off then when i got another one there was proper packaging with the replacement

brother bought a pvr off them at xmas i insisted he checked it was brand new before we left the branch and indeed it seemed to be,unfortunately it makes a popping noise through his loudspeakers every now and then but he doesnt want to take it back because he would lose his val doonican video from new years eve:D

esuhl

When I was a skint student, I I borrowed a neighbour's vacuum cleaner, but was halfway through using it when it practically blew up. I was terrified to think how angry he'd be when I returned it, and how much it would cost to repair, but it turned out he was delighted. It had always been a bit temperamental, and when he opened it up he found a receipt detailing repairs that had been done to it before he was sold it as "new" by a well-known high street shop.

Also my sister had a (very brief) job when she was a student -- polishing CDs with some pretty nasty chemicals to make them shiny again. She claimed that these had been sold before, then returned by the consumer, and that they would be returned to the shops to sell as brand new after polishing. I'm not sure how legal that was...

I've always wondered how much this sort of thing goes on...

sarahg1969

I bought a hairdryer set, and found hair in the hairbrush when I opened it. Eurgh.

trukdiver

This used to be normal practice in places like Argos, Littlewoods etc. More recently, I bought a car vacuum cleaner from Argos that had obviously been used before. I opened it up before using it and there was dirt in it.

Littlewoods used to examine all their returns and grade them. If they were OK, they repackaged them and sold them again. That was a long time ago though. These days, they'd be described as "refurbished".

I wonder what happens at other shops when people return things that don't fit etc? Do they put them back out?

epsilondraconis

I bought what I thought was new toilet roll from a well known supermarket!

S**t happens (to me anyway)...

wellused

Something that happened many years ago, I bought my son a train set from Argo set it up and it worked quite well so didn't suspect a thing. He used it several times but because of lack of space it was never permanently set up. After a while I decided to construct a baseboard for it and site it in the loft space so that he could use it whenever he wanted to. After it being in the loft for a while he complained of it not working so I assumed that it was the track needed cleaning which I did, the train worked but continued to show a reluctance to work as it should. After some time of this I decided to take it to the local model shop for some advice, when the owner opened the train up he asked where the other motor had gone, apparently the engine should have had two motors but one was missing. It had been about 18 months to 2 years since we bought the train set and so it was outside the returns period, the only explanation that I could think of for the missing motor was that someone had bought the set removed the motor and returned the train set back to Argos who put it back on the shelf from where I later bought it.
Also recently I purchased a fishing reel from the Argos clearance ebay site, when it arrived I opened the box and there was a totally different reel to the one advertised of considerably inferior quality. I opened a dispute and Argos eventually refunded my money, but yet again I question whether Argos own returns policy had allowed someone to return a different article from that which they had purchased, only to be discovered by the next purchaser?

PZH

Yep, happened to me with my freesat box. Got it home and found the remote had the batteries in already. Strange, but I thought I'd persevere in case someone had simply returned it as "not wanted" (But then thought later that the shop had clearly stated "No returns on this item")

Anyway, when I plugged it all in and turned it on - not only did it already have a postcode entered (so someone had been through the set-up procedure) it failed to find any channels whatsoever and it reported "No Signal". Now I knew for definite that the dish was working because I had a very old Sky box that I had proved it with.

I returned it, and to be fair to Argos, they were very appologetic and replaced it without any fuss. They even opened it in the shop before I left to ensure it was brand new. But I shouldn't really have been in that position as the item had clearly (in my opinion) been returned as faulty previously.

TeaCake

During last October my brother brought a new PS3 game from Argos, it was sealed in plastic wrap and he thought nothing of it until he got home, opened it and found a DVD instead of the disk and a paper insert of a PS1 game.
The Argos store in question was an hour away so I phoned customer services, explained the problem and after a spot of back and forth the service rep arranged for another copy of the game to be waiting at a local Argos, they couldn't understand it but were apologetic all the same. The store didn't understand it either, we were very grateful to Arogs for sorting it out rather than telling us to take a running jump.
Looking on the internet later its quite easy to reseal dvds/games if you know someone with the right shrink wrap "We also cannot accept back video gaming software under our 30 day money back guarantee if the plastic wrapping has been unsealed – this does not affect your statutory rights.".

We will now always make a point of opening anything brought from Argos in the shop, just in case.