Partial refund advice

SeanChad12

Hi

I am potentially seeking a refund for a product that I purchased about 10 months ago. It broke after 5 months and went for repair and has now broken again. To cut a long story short I suspect they may be difficult with me asking for a refund, they've already advised that only a repair or partial refund is on the cards.

If I do go down the route of a partial refund I'm curious what the situation is if I get a rubbish offer?

My only idea so far is to have it tested by a third party and for them to advise what percentage of it's life has been used in the short time it's actually worked.

I don't really want to take things any further until I know what I can and can't do.

I have spoken to citizens advice but when I asked about receiving a bad offer they didn't really help much.

Some other info that may help

Paid for via bank transfer in a April last year, received in June, Broke in November and then again in April. In my 10 months of ownership it's been out of action for 2 so far.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

user1977

Some clues about what the product is and the value involved might be helpful

SeanChad12

Sure, it is a battery that was custom built for my bike. Cost was £700.

pinkshoes

SeanChad12 said:

Sure, it is a battery that was custom built for my bike. Cost was £700.

Batteries are a tricky one, as they do start to deteriorate depending on storage and usage.

You will need to apply common sense here - work out how long you expected the battery to last based on your own usage, then work out what 10 months usage is as a percentage against this. You would then be requesting to have the remaining percentage refunded. 

They've had their one chance to replace it, and failed, so you are quite entitled to ask for a refund now. 

I'm assuming this is a UK seller with a UK address?

SeanChad12

Thanks for the reply, I agree it's tricky with a battery. If I ship it to him though I guess I'm at his mercy for a decent offer. 

The only thing I've thought of so far is sending it somewhere local to produce a report of it's state. If he dies give me a crappy offer do I have to go down the court route if he won't budge?

Either that or see if he's willing to pay for a repair locally by a battery repair company.

I'd say I've charged this thing 10 times tops, according to Google lithium ion battery's are good for 300-500 cycles so 3 barely used in my opinion 10 months ownership, 2 of them broken and out for repair.

Okell

SeanChad12 said:

... If I do go down the route of a partial refund I'm curious what the situation is if I get a rubbish offer?...

SeanChad12 said:

... I'd say I've charged this thing 10 times tops, according to Google lithium ion battery's are good for 300-500 cycles so 3 barely used in my opinion 10 months ownership, 2 of them broken and out for repair.

After over 6 months from purchase you are only legally entitled to a partial refund if you don't want a second repair.

Have you provided that information about expected recharge cycle life and how many times you've actually recharged it to the supplier?  Have they given any sort of indication as to what would constitute a "partial refund"?  I'd want to know what they are thinking

Based on the figures you've provided you'd be wanting to look at a refund of 95% unless you haven't been storing or using or recharging the battery according to instructions.

I'd suggest a refund of 60% was unacceptable.  Where you draw the line between 955 and 60% is up to you

Okell

SeanChad12 said:

Sure, it is a battery that was custom built for my bike. Cost was £700.

A custom built battery for a bike?

I presume the supplier has a proven track record doing this?  Sounds pretty specialised...

SeanChad12

That's right yes for a bike, I wanted something safe from somewhere with a reputation rather than some potential explosive. I guess I'll have to get agree what a partial refund would look like should it come to that and take it from there

SeanChad12

The saga continues, still no further on. Seller is asking me to return the battery and if he feels.ok upon his return will fix it and if he can't by the end of June then consider a partial refund but I'm really concerned that I'll be offered something terrible. What defence do I have at this point? I've tried googling it but everything I find is about eBay and not the same sort of situation.

Any advice would be much appreciated

Okell

SeanChad12 said:

The saga continues, still no further on. Seller is asking me to return the battery and if he feels.ok upon his return will fix it and if he can't by the end of June then consider a partial refund but I'm really concerned that I'll be offered something terrible. What defence do I have at this point? I've tried googling it but everything I find is about eBay and not the same sort of situation.

Any advice would be much appreciated

Can you give us a link to the seller?  You said you'd specifically chosen somebody with a "reputation".

As previously explained, because it's already been repaired once and has failed a second time, you are entitled to reject it for a refund if you can establish that it didn't conform to contract when you bought it.  (ie the battery had some inherent fault whan you bought it that led to it failing twice).

The best way to do this would be to get an independent report from an appropriate specialist stating that it was inherently faulty in some way  (eg poorly built; poor quality; substandard materials etc etc)

But because it's over 6 months since purchase the seller has a right to reduce your refund to take account of the 10 months (or 8 months) trouble free use you've had of it.

As I suggested in my first post on 25 April, according to the figures you quoted I'd have thought you were looking at a max refund up to 90% - 95% of what you paid, but I'm no expert on bike batteries.  How long is a piece of string?

It's up to you to decide whather any offer made by the seller is fair and reasonable.  If you decide it isn't you can always sue, but without an independent report you'll have difficulty proving your case.

You obviously carried out a lot of research before commissioning this person to build the battery.  Do you know of anyone you came across who could do a report for you?