Refunding for unhealthy rats

emperorstevee
emperorstevee Posts: 121 Forumite
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in Consumer rights
My partner bought two rats from Pets At Home for £12.50 each. They did a health check before the purchase and apparently both rats were in great health. Within less than a day, the rats were sneezing continuously and loudly. The next day, my partner called Pets at Home and told them what was up and they informed her that the entire batch of rats had respiratory problems. They would require a month's worth of treatment and took them into adoptive care to carry out this treatment. We are now being told that whilst we will be refunded the £12.50 each, we will have to make a compulsory "donation" of £6 each to get them back as they "can't give them away for free". But my thinking is that if you buy something and it turns out they were sold to you faulty, you dont pay the retailer to fix the problem, nor to give you your product back?

Comments

  • Wings_of_Ambition
    Wings_of_Ambition Posts: 1,749 Forumite
    First Anniversary First Post Combo Breaker
    edited 6 May 2018 at 12:41PM
    If you wanted to return the rats for a full refund and not get them back, I'd say that was fair.

    If however, you want the rats back for free, I think you're asking too much. Pets At Home are fixing the 'faulty items' and returning them to you, so I wouldn't expect any refund as such. If I buy a non-living item and it's faulty, I'll return the item to the retailer for repair or replacement. I wouldn't expect to get back both the new working product AND the money.
  • emperorstevee
    emperorstevee Posts: 121 Forumite
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    edited 6 May 2018 at 12:50PM
    Wings_of_Ambition wrote: »
    If you wanted to return the rats for a full refund and not get them back, I'd say that was fair.

    If however, you want the rats back for free, I think you're asking too much. Pets At Home are fixing the 'faulty items' and returning them to you, so I wouldn't expect any refund as such. If I buy a non-living item and it's faulty, I'll return the item to the retailer for repair or replacement. I wouldn't expect to get back both the new working product AND the money.

    Of course I agree. What I'm opposed to is having to pay a compulsory "donation" to have them taken out of the care their fault caused them to have to be in. I'd like them to be completely honest and straight forward, I'm not being refunded £12.50 for each rat if you are then going to ask for a £6 each donation to have them returned. They wouldn't even be in your care if you didn't sell them to us defective.
  • theoretica
    theoretica Posts: 12,297 Forumite
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    So you are being refunded £6.50 for each rat, worded in a strange way, and it is being treated at their expense.
    But a banker, engaged at enormous expense,
    Had the whole of their cash in his care.
    Lewis Carroll
  • emperorstevee
    emperorstevee Posts: 121 Forumite
    First Anniversary Name Dropper First Post
    It seems I am. I guess I'd rather they be honest and just say "we will refund you half the price when you collect them" rather than complicate things. And I suppose I was also bothered by the oxymoron "compulsory donation", I'd been given a word salad and my natural instinct was to think they must be trying to screw me over in some way, since when am I compelled to make a donation with anyone?. But yeah it's a £6.50 refund and they will treat the rats, which they could have said from the start and saved a good amount of time.
  • Savvy_Sue
    Savvy_Sue Posts: 46,017 Forumite
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    Is there a reason this is on the Charities board rather than Pets?

    If not, there's a list of Board Guides under the list of threads on the main board page, you could send a PM to one of them to get it moved.
    Signature removed for peace of mind
  • kinger101
    kinger101 Posts: 6,277 Forumite
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    Get Siberian Hamsters next time. They're much more resilient.
    "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance" - Confucius
  • Dottie2011
    Dottie2011 Posts: 6 Forumite
    This is the reason you should NEVER buy pets from pet shops! The animals are just commodities and usually from cruel rodent farms, so they are never socialised and not bred with health or temperament in mind!

    I used to buy pet rats from Pets at Home too and used to buy reduced ones that nobody wanted, until I realised how bad this was and that these rats would just be replaced by more and the ones I did buy from there nearly always had mental issues from lack of socialisation and were never healthy throughout their lives! So, after that, I always went to rescues to get my rats.
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