Merchant ships defective goods from China but return address is in the USA

BilboBarr

born_again said:

They are entitled to the goods back before refunding (Even under consumer rights) so for a refund you are going to have to comply.

 bound by The Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002. (which means nothing to chargeback)

In turn - that would mean that not providing a registered address is a breach of 6(b) which requires

6(b) the geographic address of the service provider must be given;

Did you check that the information was there?

If so you are looking at taking the company to court in whatever location they are based.

I've extracted their entire site and there is no mention of any address, the only address I have was the USA return address which was provided after several requests.   

BilboBarr

Yep - so an uphill struggle then!  

Alright let's change tack - this is the chargeback rejection from the Merchant:

The product that this customer ordered is the identical item that was displayed & described on its product page. We use rigorous quality control & protective packaging in order to ensure that every item is received in perfect quality. In addition, there were absolutely no unreasonable claims made regarding this product. We take quality claims very seriously, and we attempted to reach out to Mr/Ms. Will multiple times. Unfortunately, we did not receive any email responses from them. Beforehand, this customer did not reach out to us in order to report any issues with their order.

So - I have the image of the dented / scratched pans, I have the email where they say they will send replacements. Then they deny the 10 emails from me and their 7 replies. If this is a chargeback process, do I just need to prove that their response is incorrect or do I need to prove anything else?

BilboBarr

I do love the fact that they say "We attempted to reach out to..."  and then follow it up with "Beforehand, this customer did not reach out to us in order to report any issues with their order"

So - they reached out to me for no reason to say "How do you like your damaged pans?"   

born_again

BilboBarr said:

born_again said:

They are entitled to the goods back before refunding (Even under consumer rights) so for a refund you are going to have to comply.

 bound by The Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002. (which means nothing to chargeback)

In turn - that would mean that not providing a registered address is a breach of 6(b) which requires

6(b) the geographic address of the service provider must be given;

Did you check that the information was there?

If so you are looking at taking the company to court in whatever location they are based.

I've extracted their entire site and there is no mention of any address, the only address I have was the USA return address which was provided after several requests.   

So sadly you never checked before purchase.. As I said "Red Flag"

Monzo are right you are going to have to return at your cost if you want them to do the chargeback & you will have to personally write off the return cost in this case, as a learning. Unless the company decide to refund it on their return.
There is no chargeback cover for return costs. 

GrubbyGirl_2

Looking at that site there are so many red flags which indicate it's not a UK business.

No address
No telephone number
Shipping 6-15 days
No age verification for purchasing knives
Oriental writing on several of the products
Shockingly bad reviews on Trustpilot

I fear you've just learned an expensive lesson to check who you are planning to buy from

BilboBarr

Thanks all, yes I would never have bought from them were it not for the exact same pan being in my collection. It’s a couple of years old but looks and cooks as if it were brand new.  Of course, I now know that this was not the same company, but they got lucky and caught me off guard.

That said, Monzo got back to me that they were challenging Novara’s dispute reply. They only progress cases at this stage if they are confident we will win and as a result have refunded me, which I can keep permanently.

The fact the merchant’s dispute centred on there being no communication seemed to be the saving factor. If they had bothered to say I had not returned them they might have gotten away with it. 

So, here’s to lazy dispute handling!