Supply of Goods & Services Act 1982 - query

Phil_F

Hi there - hope somebody may be able to advise me here.

I returned from holiday back in June to find that my computer didn't boot. Having recently moved into the area, I didn't know any decent repair people but eventually found a local company in Thompson Local.

They came out, assessed the computer and advised they would need to take it away. They advised me of what the fault was and that they would need to transfer all of my data onto another machine, install a fresh copy of Windows onto my PC and then transfer data back on. Easy.

The computer was returned with the wrong operating system on it and minus all data. The repairman said that they must have forgotten to transfer it and would remotely transfer all data the following morning. I paid them £120 for the repair and waited for data to be returned but it never arrived.

I called the repair company who advise that all of the data had been lost. They said that it was due to a 'catastrophic hard drive failure' but, basically, they deleted it by accident. There was no way of retrieving it according to them. They response was 'tough - it's gone, move on'.

I contacted CAB Consumer Line who advised me to send a Supply of Goods & Services Act 1982 letter advising them that I wanted the full price of the repair back. I made it clear to CAB that I wanted monetary compensation for the loss of data. I received no response from the company in question to my letter and so sent a follow up - again no response. I was then advised to make an appointment with CAB with a view to taking this to a small claims court.

Now, I've mentioned the loss of data on my computer and need to go into this in a little more detail. I originally had around 470gb worth of data on my machine and this included music, films, word documents, photographs - the usual thing really. Most of it was backed up (but not all - yes, lesson learnt here). All of this data was wiped and a lot of it has been lost forever and can never be replaced. We were devastated as you can imagine. All of our recent holiday photographs were lost, for example.

I then found a data retrieval programme and managed to get a lot of it back, the problem being that you lose the filename of each file and I have spent around 100 hours having to manually go back over each file and rename each one. I still have an awful lot to do. So, as you can see, this has been a great loss to me.

Anyway, back on track. Had my appointment with CAB this morning and they were very helpful. Went through the Letter Before Action with them and they also talked about monetary compensation for having to carry out the repair myself, the inconvenience and stress caused and the loss of data. At this stage, all seemed well. We agreed on a figure of around £500 but they advised me to then call CAB Consumer Line again and seek further advice about potential compensation (obviously, the repair cannot be done again).

Just got off the phone to them and they have advised that I am wasting my time with compensation and that I have been badly advised on the three separate times I had previously spoken to CAB! They have said that I would be able to claim the £120 for the repair but for nothing else. I explained that I have lost around 100 hours of my own time trying to put right what was done by the computer repair company and have lost hundreds upon hundreds of personal items, many with sentimental value that can never be replaced. All of this because of the negligence of the repair company. CAB Consumer Line reiterated their position that I cannot claim for anything else other than direct costs. If somebody else had carried out the repair, then maybe. But having carried out the repair myself, then no. I was gutted and fuming as you can imagine.

Can anybody shed light on this please? Please feel free to ask any further questions about what has gone on. I'm really annoyed that I have been advised different things by different people at CAB and I took a day off work today for this. If I had known at the beginning that I was only able to claim the money for repair, then I wouldn't have bothered. The cost of recored letters, taking a day off work and potentially taking this to court will amount to more than the amount I may get back and this seems grossly unfair.

Thank you

bris

What was the fault with the pc?

According to them who's hard drive suffered the failure, your's or their's?

Before you try any claim for refund, plus consequential losses (that you must prove with receipts) you need to think about the potential risk of bring an action that might fail.

Remember you instructed them to repair the pc, their claim that your hard drive failed and was a total loss would not be unbelievable to the judge.

If it was their hard drive that had you data ready to be transferred was the one that failed then consequential losses would be possible, but again you need to prove these losses.

Looking through your thread again I see you are trying to throw in a claim for your time, this is simply not going to happen and their is no leeway in a small claims court for this. All you can claim for is direct losses.

Even then repair refund would be doubtful unles you can prove negligence, a repair was done and you have a working pc, so that may be hard to prove.

Phil_F

Thanks for your reply

I was advised that I had a Class PNP.sys error. All this required was putting Windows back on to my PC. I have text messages from the company saying that the repair had been completed and there is no mention of a 'catastrophic' hard drive failure. My partner also recorded the conversation between me and the repairman when computer was returned and he again confirmed that there had been no problems with the PC, all was well and all data had been transferred. It was only when I mentioned the data loss that they then said that there had been a hard drive failure. They said that all data was lost. The fact that I used a free programme and found the data in question shows that there was no hard drive failure. According to them, we are talking about the total loss of 470gb worth of date.

Thanks,
Phil

Slowhand

I'm not sure any repair company could/would 'guarantee' the safety of the data on a PC they were repairing.

Phil_F

Thank you,

It was a relatively simple process that I would expect to be carried out with reasonable care and skill. It wasn't.

They advised me that there had been no problem with the repair and that all data had been transferred. That then turned into all data will be transferred and it was only later that they then changed their mind and said that all data had been lost.

DevCoder

1. If it's the same hard drive in the machine then it wasn't a catastrophic failure, especially as it would seem you can recover some of the data from the drive?
2. On the note above, you are using two drives now during recovery? One containing the OS and the recovery program and space for the recovered files and the original drive that you are recovering data from. It is essential you do not use the old drive to act as both as you will overwrite the recoverable section of the drive with recovered data (and other things such as temp and paging files etc). The recovered data will not map directly over the recoverable parts if that makes sense.
3. Im not sure on the admission of recorded calls where you have not advised the other party you are recording them, did you do this?
4.It does indeed sound like you have been mis-advised by the original CAB, you can only claim for direct losses and those quantifiable consequential losses that you ca also prove you have taken steps to mitigate the value of. For example if its going to take you 400 hrs and you are claiming £1000 for this then you should also prove that you also looked into a data recovery company that could recover it for less, thus mitigating the total loss.

Phil_F

Thanks Krisdorey

1. Yes, exactly.

2. Yes, all makes sense and done. The programme I used still didn't bring everything back, so still quite a bit lost. And that is what is most galling about this. The 'repair' they carried out was useless. I would have been better off wiping the PC myself and then trying to 'recover' the files.

3. No, I agree. I didn't know that she had recorded the conversation until later. But I also know it cannot be used as evidence. But, it is there and it is proof, to me at least, of negligence on their part.

4. I did look into professional data recovery but it's not cheap at all. I decided that the cheapest method, at least in terms of monetary value, was to do it myself. At this stage, I was a little nervous about letting my PC go again. Like a lot of people, I rely on it and thought at least I have got it at home. The repair company didn't return the computer on the day they said they would and at one point said they knew nothing about it and denied they had it. Then, they said that I 'might' get it returned. I called the police at this stage and got a crime number. It was only at thsi stage did they agree to return it. I think they knew at this stage that they had mucked up.

I think I know exactly what was happened - proving it is a different matter.

I am most annoyed a the loss of personal items. To me, it's like somebody coming into your house to carry out a repair and then finding a box of old photos and burning them. Yes, I can't prove a monetary loss and I certainly haven't got receipts for the photos but something has gone wrong and I would like compensation for this.