Returning an unwanted item question

typhoon77

My wife purchased a hair straightening tool from Lookfantastic.com. She opened it and tried it but found it was not all what she wanted and did not work on her hair at all well. We tried to cancel under the 14 day cooling off period, but they will not refund as they say due to reasons of hygiene. However it does not as far as I can see mention that at all on their website. They do mention that items cannot be opened: lookfantastic.com/info/refunds-returns.list. Is there anything further that we can do? Thanks in advance!

RoonilWazlib_2

There are some exemptions under the law that mean some products don't have cooling off periods. One of those is for reasons of hygiene.

sjbrun

Would you be happy purchasing hair straightners that someone else has already tried / used?

bris

Using hair straighteners is a personal thing, I certainly wouldn't want to give any of my family an unsealed box.

typhoon77

I appreciate what has been said but should the company not make it abundantly clear on their site that these kind of products cannot be returned if tested? Also hair straighteners are not the same as underwear or earrings for example and those kind of tools get used in hair salons on multiple clients per day without being thoughroughly cleansed.

unholyangel

RoonilWazlib wrote: »

There are some exemptions under the law that mean some products don't have cooling off periods. One of those is for reasons of hygiene.

They do have a cooling period. Just there are certain circumstances where the right to cancel can be lost. One of those is:

(3) The rights conferred by this Part cease to be available in the following circumstances—

(a)in the case of a contract for the supply of sealed goods which are not suitable for return due to health protection or hygiene reasons, if they become unsealed after delivery;

So if the goods were not sealed in the first place or did not become unsealed after delivery, the right to cancel would still exist.


For hair straighteners, I think it could go either way. Typically they are not sealed for hygiene reasons (or at least no set I've bought was). Quite clearly someone else using it isn't a major deal (despite comments on here) or hairdressers & barbers would be using throw away straighteners with a new one being opened each customer.

There are a lot of items I wouldn't buy knowing someone else had used it - but if that alone allowed retailers to disclaim on hygiene reasons.....there would be very little you would have the right to return.

daytona0

typhoon77 wrote: »

I appreciate what has been said but should the company not make it abundantly clear on their site that these kind of products cannot be returned if tested? Also hair straighteners are not the same as underwear or earrings for example and those kind of tools get used in hair salons on multiple clients per day without being thoughroughly cleansed.

Well, hair can have dandruff and nits and all sorts of rubbish in it! Wouldn't personally want to purchase that from the company after your wife had used it (not to accuse her of anything because, well, I have no idea how well she maintains her hair!).

You can only really INSPECT the goods in the same manner you would in a shop and that's another point; your wife USED IT and you can't really do that in a store!