PC World

Pontoon

I bought a Lenovo yoga 2 13 from PC world at the start of April using vouchers through a scheme at work.

After a bit of a saga involving a dodgy touchpad, epileptic cursor and delay of my exams. This included 4 phonecalls to them since purchase, to be removed from mailing, emailing and txt lists:mad:

I gave them the opportunity to fix it, it came back in a worse state than I sent it with a new error message on the desktop as they'd replaced the hard drive (no fault with the previous one as far as I knew). I phoned their knowhow number and found myself patronised and irritated. I did manage to cure the error message issue with some windows updates, but not the initial touchpad problem.

This was the final straw. I took it back today for a refund.

It took me an hour of listening to "you aren't entitled to a refund! you are entitled to a replacement or repair!", being passed from person to person and back and offered replacement repetitively.
I stuck to my guns explaining, incompetent repair staff, patronising and rude people and an inability to remove me and keep me removed from their mailing lists as all good reasons for me not wishing to continue to have a relationship with this company.

The acceded and gave me a refund in the form of a gift card for the value, as I made the original purchase on vouchers. ... so it was a half win. I thought about trying for cash or onto my card but was sure it would be a losing battle and my patience was shot already.

I now am wondering if I am likely to be able to get a refund for this gift card. If so how do I go about it? Has anyone had any luck doing this? It's almost £600 so it's not exactly small change.

wealdroam

Pontoon wrote: »

I bought a Lenovo yoga 2 13 from PC world at the start of April using vouchers through a scheme at work.

After a bit of a saga involving a dodgy touchpad, epileptic cursor and delay of my exams. This included 4 phonecalls to them since purchase, to be removed from mailing, emailing and txt lists:mad:

I gave them the opportunity to fix it, it came back in a worse state than I sent it with a new error message on the desktop as they'd replaced the hard drive (no fault with the previous one as far as I knew). I phoned their knowhow number and found myself patronised and irritated. I did manage to cure the error message issue with some windows updates, but not the initial touchpad problem.

This was the final straw. I took it back today for a refund.

It took me an hour of listening to "you aren't entitled to a refund! you are entitled to a replacement or repair!", being passed from person to person and back and offered replacement repetitively.
I stuck to my guns explaining, incompetent repair staff, patronising and rude people and an inability to remove me and keep me removed from their mailing lists as all good reasons for me not wishing to continue to have a relationship with this company.

The acceded and gave me a refund in the form of a gift card for the value, as I made the original purchase on vouchers. ... so it was a half win. I thought about trying for cash or onto my card but was sure it would be a losing battle and my patience was shot already.

I now am wondering if I am likely to be able to get a refund for this gift card. If so how do I go about it? Has anyone had any luck doing this? It's almost £600 so it's not exactly small change.

So you got the original vouchers through a scheme at work.

Why do you think you should be able to convert those vouchers to cash?

I cannot imagine that would be possible. There is certainly no law that would help you with that, so you would be relying on a goodwill gesture, and from where I'm sitting that is looking unlikely.

LilElvis

Sell the vouchers on eBay - you should get a reasonable return.

marliepanda

Legally they did not even have to give you a credit note/gift card, so you have zero to no chance of them converting that gift card into cash.

ThumbRemote

In rejecting the laptop you are entitled to be put back into the position you were before the contract was formed. In this case that seems impossible, as there is no refund mechanism for workplace vouchers. Hence PC World have done the right thing in giving a gift card.

How much did the vouchers cost you, and how much have you got as a refund?

George_Michael

marliepanda wrote: »

Legally they did not even have to give you a credit note/gift card.

Maybe or maybe not.
It all depends on how long after the purchase was made that the fault became apparent and when PC World were informed of this.
If it was only a couple of weeks or less then this would probably fall into the rejection within a reasonable time scenario, in which case a full refund can be insisted upon.

Geodark

George_Michael wrote: »

Maybe or maybe not.
It all depends on how long after the purchase was made that the fault became apparent and when PC World were informed of this.
If it was only a couple of weeks or less then this would probably fall into the rejection within a reasonable time scenario, in which case a full refund can be insisted upon.

In the form they were given - they didnt pay cash or card, they used vouchers so the shop are well within their rights to issue their refund in vouchers.

Pontoon

Totally aware they followed procedure.
The actual reason for the gift card aside, has anyone managed to get a gift card converted back to money?

The only time ive managed was through Ticketmaster. What appears to be a bit of a scam, of not allowing their gift cards to be used on partner sites, yet none of the venues in my area are available on their own site only on their partner sites, so I couldn't spend the gift. I phoned to complain and discovered that once the year life has ran out they will refund your money if you ask, while if it is still valid they charge you an admin fee.

I was wondering if this might be valid for PC world too.

Pontoon

Please note, my reason being, I find PC worlds attitude towards the public horrible. I want to have no further relationship with them. Hense why I want my money extracted rather than it be used on a future sale.

Their technical staff are handicapped by policy so they can't actually complete repairs and properly test them. Knowing my new desktop error was because they weren't allowed to run windows updates sounds ridiculous. The fact I had an accompanying later saying my fix had been "quality assurance checked" is basically a lie if they haven't tested it for driver clashes which may occur after the updates.

Nb there was no evidence of them actually trying to fix the issue I had, they just changed the hard drive. No idea why, it wasn't causing me problems.

Geodark

Pontoon wrote: »

Totally aware they followed procedure.
The actual reason for the gift card aside, has anyone managed to get a gift card converted back to money?

The only time ive managed was through Ticketmaster. What appears to be a bit of a scam, of not allowing their gift cards to be used on partner sites, yet none of the venues in my area are available on their own site only on their partner sites, so I couldn't spend the gift. I phoned to complain and discovered that once the year life has ran out they will refund your money if you ask, while if it is still valid they charge you an admin fee.

I was wondering if this might be valid for PC world too.

Did you pay full price for the vouchers or did you get them discounted through work?

wealdroam

Pontoon wrote: »

Totally aware they followed procedure.
The actual reason for the gift card aside, has anyone managed to get a gift card converted back to money?

The only time ive managed was through Ticketmaster. What appears to be a bit of a scam, of not allowing their gift cards to be used on partner sites, yet none of the venues in my area are available on their own site only on their partner sites, so I couldn't spend the gift. I phoned to complain and discovered that once the year life has ran out they will refund your money if you ask, while if it is still valid they charge you an admin fee.

I was wondering if this might be valid for PC world too.

Post#2 goes a long way to answering your question.

Also, should they so wish, PCW could cite money laundering regulations to refuse conversion to cash.

How have PCW responded to your request?