ISME - Laptop refund advice, please

creativea

Hello, I''m new here and would appreciate some assistance.

We purchased a £699 Lenovo flex laptop from ISME which arrived 8th November (less than 7 days ago). Ever since it arrived we have been increasingly unhappy with the laptop - it has been running slow and struggling with even internet browsing, despite us having superfast Virgin fibre optic broadband. To add insult to injury the laptop then came up with a graphics card fault pop up and crashed this morning.

With our increasing unhappiness we decided to ring ISME and request a refund, such is our rights under the distance selling regulations/ sale of goods act as we understand it. And this is where our nightmare has began...

Never in all my years have I encountered such appalling and rude customer service. We rang ISME this morning and were put through to customer services who said that the relevant team would need to ring me back to arrange a refund at some point today. Having heard nothing by gone 4pm we decided to ring again...and after another unhelpful dealing with customer service we were given the direct number for technical assistance (despite my clarification that we didn't need assistance just a refund please!) after 15 minutes on hold I get through to a lady called Sharon. She was incredibly rude and patronising so we then requested to speak to her manager - a lady called Sarah. She was just as bad and accused us of being aggressive with her (Not the case we were simply very frustrated by this point).

The bottom line is through they are now towing an insane line of customer service which is -

- Had we rang up and not mentioned the graphic cards fault and just that we wanted to return it under distance selling regs they would have refunded it no problem.

- But now because we have said there is a fault they can't give us a refund, they need to inspect the fault and diagnose it. If the engineer report says no fault it will be returned to us and that sorry we will no longer be eligible to return it under distance selling regs and no refund will be given.

This makes no sense to us!? I said I just wanted a refund and the fact there was a fault was not really our problem as it didn't negate our rights under distance selling regs/sale of goods acts.

I am completely appalled as this makes no sense. My consumer confidence is at an all time low and I fully expect their "engineers" to say no fault and return it to us given today's performance. How on earth can they say that I'm no longer than entitled to return it as the engineer report is fine?!

The "tech guy" I was by then speaking to who ran "diagnostics" which consisted of telling me to boot up the machine and tell him which operating system I was using then proceeded to tell me oh well it booted up fine just now there are clearly no issues with it!!
Also they tried to put words in my mouth when I mentioned we ran our own business about that it was for business use not personal (not the case).

He then said it wasn't his fault as I was asking him to "re-write" the sale of goods act by wanting a refund on a fault item that was also unsatisfactory...that it couldn't be unsatisfactory as now it was faulty?! Talk about barmy..

Can someone just clarify how we should best approach this as I have spent the sum of 2 hours bashing my head against a brick wall and I am very reluctant to send this off for the fault to be diagnosed where it's completely at their mercy...knowing if they can't find a fault we will have it returned to us saying we can no longer get a refund!!

frugal_mike

The distant selling regulations have been superseded by the Consumer Contracts Regulations. It's the same concept though. You now have 14 days to tell them you want to cancel (from the day you received it). You must tell them by durable means (email, letter, etc). Once your cancellation is sent you have 14 days from that point to return the item.

One big difference though is that the retailer is allowed to make a deduction from the refund to account for any reduction in value to the item caused by your handling of it if that handling was beyond what is reasonable to ascertain its nature. I have no idea if ISME will attempt to do that (due to your use of the item) or not.

The Sale of Goods Act is only relevant if the goods truly are faulty (or don't conform to contract in some other way). In that case ISME would be entitled to inspect the item before refunding. If they found out the item was not faulty that would in no way remove your right to cancel under the Consumer Contracts Regulations though.

creativea

Thanks for your reply...I suppose the nub issue is they are now telling me I can't return the item for a refund under the Consumer Contracts Regulations BECAUSE it has had a fault occur so it can only be dealt with under sale of goods act?! This is what makes no sense to me. I told them I just wanted to return it for a refund as all in all it wasn't satisfactory regardless of the outcome of an engineers report so the fault was in this instance kind of a moot point.

unholyangel

creativea wrote: »

Thanks for your reply...I suppose the nub issue is they are now telling me I can't return the item for a refund under the Consumer Contracts Regulations BECAUSE it has had a fault occur so it can only be dealt with under sale of goods act?! This is what makes no sense to me. I told them I just wanted to return it for a refund as all in all it wasn't satisfactory regardless of the outcome of an engineers report so the fault was in this instance kind of a moot point.

Wtih CCRs and SoGA - its not a case of one or the other applying. They both apply.

The fault isnt a moot point though as usually when returning under CCR's, the consumer is liable for return postage (providing the retailer complies with the pre-contractual information relating to this) while faulty goods are always returned at the expense of the retailer.

If it is faulty then I doubt you have much to worry about. If it was possibly user error then you may have cause for concern - but even then, providing you have contacted them in a durable form and also sent the goods back no later than 14 days after sending your cancellation then you would have fulfilled the requirements of CCR's (however you may then be liable for postage costs).

If you're really dubious/its an intermittent fault, you can always take pictures/a video recording of the fault happening before you send it off so you have "proof" of the fault so to speak.