Returns

Okell

tightauldgit said:

Okell said:

s20(15) Consumer Rights Act 2015 (legislation.gov.uk)

"20  Right to reject

... (15) A refund under this section must be given without undue delay, and in any event within 14 days beginning with the day on which the trader agrees that the consumer is entitled to a refund..."

So have you agreed your customer is entitled to a refund?

Must admit, if I were a small business I'd like to have received the goods back before paying a refund... but the law is the law and applies to small businesses as well as large ones.

The way that's written a business saying 'please return the item so we can confirm it's not the right one and then issue a refund' would be perfectly within the law though?...

So long as they haven't already agreed to a refund - yes.  I think a seller is probably permitted to check that the consumer has a valid reason for a refund under the CRA before agreeing to pay one.  If I were a retailer I'd want to check, I think.

tightauldgit said:

... Slightly different part of the legislation but if you look on the .gov.uk site about refunds it talks about the 14 day right to cancel for distance sales and says the business should refund within 14 days of receiving the goods back.  

If I recall correctly, under the cancellation regulations the consumer has 14 days in which to cancel and then a further 14 days in which to return the goods.  The seller must pay the refund within 14 days of either (a) receiving the goods back or (b) the consumer providing proof they've sent the goods back .

It's perhaps curious that the requirements for when a refund should be paid are not more similar.

Maybe it makes sense or maybe it's just not good drafting

lollipop320

RefluentBeans said:

I’m not sure if I’m being dense - but could you not have booked a collection for them via Royal Mail - recently discovered they collect from your house for free now, and will bring a label with them. I suppose you’re still away for the moment, so doesn’t solve the problem of getting the parcel any quicker. 

The customer ordered 3 items, 2 he said were in correct. We asked for photos and only 1 was incorrect. We are using royal mail but we will raise the return label when we are back in the UK. We have done all of this whilst out of the country and after putting up a notice on our website stating the company is closed for annual leave. The customer saw the notice and said he knew we were closed but still wanted us to do something before we returned. We admitted the wrong items were sent out by mistake as we were trying to fulfill the orders before closing and at first he didn't accept this and wanted to know why we would send out incorrect items, obviously a mistake was made and we didn't intententionally send wrong items. Even if we did the return label now we are not available to accept the returned goods

tightauldgit

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

tightauldgit said:

Okell said:

s20(15) Consumer Rights Act 2015 (legislation.gov.uk)

"20  Right to reject

... (15) A refund under this section must be given without undue delay, and in any event within 14 days beginning with the day on which the trader agrees that the consumer is entitled to a refund..."

So have you agreed your customer is entitled to a refund?

Must admit, if I were a small business I'd like to have received the goods back before paying a refund... but the law is the law and applies to small businesses as well as large ones.

The way that's written a business saying 'please return the item so we can confirm it's not the right one and then issue a refund' would be perfectly within the law though?

Slightly different part of the legislation but if you look on the .gov.uk site about refunds it talks about the 14 day right to cancel for distance sales and says the business should refund within 14 days of receiving the goods back.  

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/notes/division/3/1/3/4/2

118.Subsection (15) requires a trader to provide any refund due to the consumer without undue delay and at the latest within 14 days from when the trader agrees that the consumer is entitled to it. For example, if a consumer rejects goods because of a technical fault which cannot be seen without testing or detailed examination, the 14-day period would start once the trader had carried out the appropriate tests and found the goods were indeed faulty. In contrast, if it was clear from looking at the goods that they breached the relevant requirement under the Act, there is unlikely to be any reason for the trader not to agree immediately that the consumer is entitled to a refund

Most the people posting here for help are dealing with businesses that are either ignoring consumer rights or trying to skirt around them, I appreciate a small business doesn't want to refund a customer without having the goods under their control but OP knows their business and either agrees they sent the wrong goods or they don't. 

There's no need for excuses either way as enforcing it would take longer than the OP sorting the issue but OP should be given the correct information and they can make a decision rather than being given excuses they could come up with to skirt around their obligations  

Given that the legislation is ambiguous and doesn't actually state that you must refund without receiving the goods back then I don't think there's any skirting involved. The law states 14 days from when you 'agree' to a refund, if I'm a small business I'm not agreeing to a refund without the goods back. The guidance you provide doesn't necessarily disagree with that as it seems to be talking about whether you can delay a refund to examine/test something once you've received it back  and it's obviously not compliant so testing would be superfluous.

In this specific case it seems OP has already agreed to a refund so they should do so promptly, but in future they might want to be more guarded in their wording to customers if they do want to get the product back before issuing any money. 

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

tightauldgit said:

The law states 14 days from when you 'agree' to a refund, if I'm a small business I'm not agreeing to a refund without the goods back. 

If it is clear the goods do not conform you don't have a choice as to whether you agree or not as you would clearly do so. 

Being "guarded" with words is skirting around the law in such an instance, it appears you would wish to avoid the risk of the consumer getting a refund and not bothering to return the goods by insisting the goods are returned before refunding, understandable but the regs aren't always in the trader's favour.

It can be dressed in a variety of ways but ultimately if the customer orders a green widget and gets a blue one in error then you don't have any choice but to agree the goods do not conform as there isn't a question over the matter. 

tightauldgit

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

tightauldgit said:

The law states 14 days from when you 'agree' to a refund, if I'm a small business I'm not agreeing to a refund without the goods back. 

If it is clear the goods do not conform you don't have a choice as to whether you agree or not as you would clearly do so. 

Being "guarded" with words is skirting around the law in such an instance, it appears you would wish to avoid the risk of the consumer getting a refund and not bothering to return the goods by insisting the goods are returned before refunding, understandable but the regs aren't always in the trader's favour.

It can be dressed in a variety of ways but ultimately if the customer orders a green widget and gets a blue one in error then you don't have any choice but to agree the goods do not conform as there isn't a question over the matter. 

Your interpretation of the law is certainly one way to read it. But that's all it is. 

Being guarded with your words and being specific in your meaning without diminishing your rights is what ANYONE should do when dealing with legal matters. 

There's all sorts of stunts consumers pull - returning different items to the ones they were sent, not returning things at all, claiming things are faulty when they aren't, damaging things and then trying to get a refund on them - so it would only be sensible to check any item being returned before agreeing to a refund. And it would appear that the legislation allows that.

If the wrong item is sent there certainly would be no grounds to refuse the refund but nobody has mentioned refusing to refund. 

I'd also point out that I was talking in general rather than the specifics of the OP. To be honest I would consider that asking a customer to wait until you've come back from holiday may well be an undue delay and in that specific case it may certainly be more appropriate to issue the refund without getting the item back first. I don't think customers should be inconvenienced by your holiday arrangements as a small business.