Rufund for faulty electrical goods

st0ne5ish

Hi,

I purchased a hard disk from an online company in Nov 2012. The hard disk came with a 2 year warranty. It has now failed and I contacted the company to ask them to repair/replace it.

They have agreed to repair or replace it if they find it faulty on return.

They have requested I send the drive back to them. When I asked for confirmation they would repay the postage cost of retuning the drive if it was faulty they refused stating:

[FONT=&quot]"Regarding the refund of the cost of the postage, we will not be able to refund this due to the item being outside the first year of purchase with us."[/FONT]

So the question is does the company have to pay the postage costs for me to return the faulty drive to them by law? If so is this written down anywhere so I can send them the details?

Thanks,
Steve

Jim_Jupiter

The request of a repair/replacement is via their own warranty so while claiming under that you are bound by its conditions.

It may be possible to go down the SOGA route in which case I believe you're entitled for your postage costs reimbursed...however that may cause more hassle than its worth if they start insisting on independent reports and what not.

Personally I'd suck up the postage cost and get your repair/replacement.

JJ_Egan

Could be that the two year warranty is with the manufacturer and the vendor will just run the hardware vendors test and RTM if faulty .

st0ne5ish

The warranty is with the company I bought it with, if I check the warranty on the Seagate site it tells me's to check with the company I bought it from.

It's not so much the hassle but the principle, if they are telling me I have to pay the return postage on faulty goods they must be telling everyone the same thing.

I contacted the director of customer services for the company and they quoted the "CONSUMER CONTRACTS (INFORMATION AND ADDITIONAL CHARGES) REGULATIONS DECEMBER 2013"

And said in her email

"Further to your email of this afternoon, this regulation came into play on the 13th of June and it does state that;

With regard to any returns, you must make clear that the consumer must pay for returns if their contact includes goods to be returned, unless you (we ) are willing to pay for that cost.

Therefore due to the above and the age of the product we can arrange a collection but there will be a charge for doing so"

When I checked those regulations in detail they state “Where goods received are faulty or not fit for purpose or as described, consumers have different rights which are covered by separate legislation.” which I assume is the Sale of Goods Act

and also

"These regulations will apply to contracts concluded on or after 13 June 2014."

So I don't think she knows what shes on about.

bris

Your getting SOGA mixed up with warranty, they are 2 totally different things.

The 2 years is a warranty and as such they set the terms of that warranty, in this case you pay the return postage which is perfectly legal.

If you want to go down the SOGA route then they can insist you prove the item has an inherent fault as it's past the 6 month point. To do that you would need an independent engineer to report the fault was present at the time of manufacture, this is almost impossible to do. They can also still ask you to return it at your cost for them to verify the report, but this would be refunded to you along with the cost of the report if found in your favour.

The bad part however is that if they did concede a SOGA fault then they can reduce the cost of a refund to reflect the use you have had from the item so you may only get a small percentage back.

As hard drives are very hard to repair the can choose the cheapest option for them so a replacement may very well be out the picture compared to a partial refund.

So in reality be careful what you wish for, it can bite you on the bum.