Safest way to refund a cash on collection item?

parking_question_chap

Sounds fishy to me, they buy a cheap dishwasher and want to get a refund on the £5. Sounds like this might be a precursor to a fake damages claim if you admit to guilt by refunding.

Say it was sold as working, and you will not be refunding.

As somebody else said, if he wanted a guarantee he should have gone to a shop.

Tealblue

RFW wrote: »

I agree but sometimes it isn't worth the hassle of standing your ground.

There's some grey areas here as far as I know. If it was sold as something that could be used again and it did have a fault then the seller can be liable. If it was sold as 'spares/repair' then it's the buyer's problem.

I don't think sending £5 is an admission of guilt/responsibility.

I think what I may do would be to buy a £5 postal order, keep the order number and post it to him. Stick a note in saying "with compliments, sorry there was a problem after you fitted it" or words to that effect. If you're worried about legal requirements ask CAB or a solicitor (some have free drop in sessions). They may suggest you add "ex gratia" or "without prejudice", although I often think that adding legal terms gives people ideas that they can go to court.

Most firms charge £15+ to take a broken dishwasher/washing machine away so think of it as being £10 up.

We recently moved and I brought my old dishwasher with, I unknowingly damaged it in transit and almost flooded the kitchen after I'd fitted it. There's lots of ways things can go wrong, so it wouldn't be so cut and dried who's fault it was. I doubt, if it went to court, that a judge would look favourably on someone paying £5 for a dishwasher and not having it tested before fitting it. Your refund, should you go ahead with it, would more likely put you in a good light than be evidence of you admitting culpability.

Sometimes you can overthink an issue...there's no requirement to refund and no advantage to doing so. The idea of taking legal advice over whether or not to refund a fiver is way OTT! Just leave it be and let the seller do whatever they want to do - it won't get them very far.

theoretica

If I were in the buyer's position, I would be more miffed at the seller profiting from the sale than by the loss of a fiver. How about an apology (so sorry the dishwasher didn't work once you got it home, I wouldn't have sold it if I had any idea it would do that) and a suggestion that you pass the fiver to charity as you don't have a paypal payment to refund?

ballisticbrian

It may be a case of, "right now you've refunded my money, you can take it to the tip at your expense and pay the white goods disposal to the recycling centre"