Return never collected, over 2 years. Now say they want to collect?

Mark31

bris wrote: »

Is it? I think it's odd to keep useless emails sent or received and clean them up all the time.


To be fair 2 years later this has came back to bite the OP, unforeseen as it may be and they are mostly to blame so I doubt they will do anything about it anyway.


The 2 emails weren't enough to absolve the OP of their duties as an involuntary baillee so they are kind of irrelevant anyway.


I would call their bluff because they simply wont be chasing the cost of a faulty monitor through the courts.

This is kind of what I am feeling,

so how would I go about calling their bluff? Or best way to approach this please?

Takmon

bris wrote: »

Is it? I think it's odd to keep useless emails sent or received and clean them up all the time.

That seems like a waste of time to me. If your using a service such as Gmail then you can simply "archive" all emails. Why bother to take the time to delete any email when they can just sit in the background just in case you might need them.

Mark31 wrote: »

Yes it does look odd, perhaps if I still worked for the company whos email I was using at the time I could access them but I have not been an employee with them for some time.

As they arranged collection, didn't turn up on the day, never contacted me again and didn't respond to my emails I kept the item safe for 14 months. The onus was certainly on them and not me surely?

I assumed they didn't want it back, cost of collection and repair too high to them. I feel like the fact I kept it safe for 14 months and made two attempts to arrange them to collect I did my part in this.

How can you say they haven't replied to your emails or tried to contact you when you say you haven't had access to that email account for some time.

davidmcn

bris wrote: »

I would call their bluff because they simply wont be chasing the cost of a faulty monitor through the courts.

Probably not, though what the OP is currently claiming for is probably not worth much more.

Paul_DNAP

I don't think there is a hard time limit set in the Consumer Rights Act, just that "the consumer has a duty to make the goods available for collection by the trader or (if there is an agreement for the consumer to return rejected goods) to return them as agreed." - I suppose IF they did take you to court you could argue that there was no final agreement on them taking the old monitor back (since they never gave you a collection date, time, tracking number etc.) and if they are going down the "no proof of your emails to us" then you also have "no proof of their emails to you" in that if they can't prove a date and time when a courier turned up and you didn't have the monitor for them then they can't prove you didn't fulfil your duties.


In the end though, the small claims will come down on the basis of "what would a reasonable person expect" - and I would offer my opinion that a reasonable person would expect the collection of the faulty goods to be arranged swiftly after the delivery of the replacement (even at the same time). It may be questioned if you took reasonable steps to contact them, but then you could argue it is not reasonable to expect you to have to chase them at all, it was their monitor and their duty to arrange the collection, they should have been chasing you more than you should have been chasing them.


In short - tell them you gave them reasonable opportunity to collect it at the time, and they chose not to. If they are still grumpy then just send them a polite "see you in court then".

George_Michael

Paul_DNAP wrote: »

I don't think there is a hard time limit set in the Consumer Rights Act, just that "the consumer has a duty to make the goods available for collection by the trader or (if there is an agreement for the consumer to return rejected goods) to return them as agreed."

In this instance, it's not the CRA that will cause a problem but the "Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977"

Even though the OP didn't own the monitor, they still had a duty of care towards it as they were an involuntary bailee and if they wanted to dispose of it then there is a specific procedure to follow.
https://www.stephens-scown.co.uk/commercial-property/whose-belongings-are-they-anyway-dealing-with-involuntary-bailment/

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1977/32

In the end it will probably come down to the cost of the monitor. If it was £100 or so then in all likelihood nothing will happen but if it was a large screen HD monitor valued at many hundreds then it may be different.

Carrot007

bris wrote: »

Is it? I think it's odd to keep useless emails sent or received and clean them up all the time.

They take up negligable space and it is not worth the time take nto delete them. Spam filtering works, I never see spam.


At least OP has now provided an reason they do not have them anymore. Abusing work emails for private purposes. A firable offence in many companies. And also highlighted that even if it were allowed it is not a good idea because you are not in control of them.

bris wrote: »

To be fair 2 years later this has came back to bite the OP, unforeseen as it may be and they are mostly to blame so I doubt they will do anything about it anyway.



The 2 emails weren't enough to absolve the OP of their duties as an involuntary baillee so they are kind of irrelevant anyway.

I agree OP acted irrresponsible without researching their responsibilities, which are fairly obvious. Still hard to know the reasons why so maybe they had a good reason to think it was reasonable.

bris wrote: »

I would call their bluff because they simply wont be chasing the cost of a faulty monitor through the courts.

Quite possibly. Really depends on the company. There are some that would do it for anything!

Boohoo

I think the monitor cost £450 reading from one of his threads from 2016 when he had an issue with a monitor and they sent him a refurbished monitor which he was not happy about.


The company he bought it from was Debenhams by the way.

HopeAndDriftWood

I assumed they didn't want it back, cost of collection and repair too high to them. I feel like the fact I kept it safe for 14 months and made two attempts to arrange them to collect I did my part in this.


Legally I don't think you've got much of an argument that you did. Two emails is nothing, and you can't even prove that you sent those. Plus as someone else said, how can you be sure that they didn't respond after you'd left the company?

If it was a cheap monitor I think they'd put this to one side but if it was £450, it's worth their while in pursuing it even if they are penalised somewhat for not making an effort to collect it in a reasonable time. They could still end up with £300/350.

What was said about the old monitor when the new one was delivered? Did that documentation refer to the old one being collected?

mattyprice4004

Mark31 wrote: »

I assumed they didn't want it back, cost of collection and repair too high to them. I feel like the fact I kept it safe for 14 months and made two attempts to arrange them to collect I did my part in this.

I have highlighted the problem
I can see your point, and I agree that it's a pain - but I run a business where customers refuse to return things, expect a replacement and just bin the original part without checking etc.
It's a big problem, and I'm glad the law is there to make sure businesses do get their faulty items back.

I've still got a Sony TV in the loft that died a few years ago - still not collected! I've asked them several times, so just got fed up and chucked it up there.

pinkshoes

The problem here is that the OP could be trying to send back the original faulty one to get it fixed as well as keeping a working one...

(Not saying you are, but this is how it could look...)

It was careless of you to lose your evidence showing you had tried to arrange collection. For future reference, print important emails like this!!

But, clearly by sending another monitor they accepted the first one was faulty.

Are you sure they didn't charge you twice when the first one wasn't returned?

Could you get hold of a second hand broken one of that model to return? (Or would they have unique serial numbers at that price??)

You need to play this carefully otherwise they might take you to court for the full amount!!