Two Pennies Worth

How to get a refund, repair or replacement for faulty goods

Consumer champion Sam Dunn explains your rights when it comes to getting a refund, repair or replacement for faulty goods.

By Sam Dunn

To get on in school, it paid to master the key three Rs: reading, writing and arithmetic.

As a consumer pitched against canny companies, you’ll need to concentrate on a rather different trio instead: refund, repair or replacement.

When you buy faulty items you’ll often run up against corporate flimflam, a fog of confusion or – worse – downright ignorance from customer service staff desperate to avoid paying out. So it pays to know what you’re entitled to.

Your right to refund

First, and most clearly, you’re entitled to a refund if you immediately discover your goods are faulty without even using them. For example, you get home and then spot a missing or cracked part, say, or can see damaged casing.

As long as you can show proof of purchase - the original receipt is easiest but a print-out of a credit card or bank statement will pass muster – then this is usually a watertight case for a refund.

In many cases, you’re also eligible for a refund if you only use the goods a couple of times before realising they’re damaged or faulty – for example you realise after a day or two that your new fridge doesn’t keep your food cool or your DVD player won’t play discs without randomly ejecting them.

Don’t leave it too late

The key emphasis here is on time – and making sure you don’t take too long to decide whether to “reject” (as it’s known in the trade jargon) your faulty goods.

Unfortunately, there is no legal definition of just how much time you can take to complain and reject faulty goods.

It’s something that companies sneakily use to wriggle out of paying up - and whether or not you can get a refund can depend hugely on the type of goods and circumstances surrounding a delay in your complaint.

For example, one national high-street retailer recently refused to refund a brand new kitchen appliance that had only been used once because the buyer hadn’t installed it for six weeks. The reason? He was busily looking after his unwell daughter instead.

To preserve your right to a refund, install, test or check anything you buy ASAP.

The minute you think they’re faulty, stop using the goods immediately and contact the seller as soon as possible by phone (and put it in writing to boot as a sign of your intent).

Repairs and replacements

Once you’ve run out of time for a refund, you’re left with a repair or replacement option – but when are you entitled to which and why?

First, let’s dip briefly back into the legalese.

If you’ve bought and used goods for a considerable time – say you’ve had a new lawnmower for a couple of months but its recently sputtering engine suggests a developing fault – by law you have now “accepted” the goods.

This means you’re no longer entitled to a refund but the store or garden centre you bought it from should offer to repair or replace it.

Your choice of a repair or replacement isn’t clear cut and you probably won’t be able to make an outright preference because the law goes someway towards keeping costs down for all parties.

So if a lawnmower repair is likely to be significantly cheaper than a replacement for you, then the store can first offer this. However, it should carry out your repair within a reasonable time and without causing you any significant inconvenience (and if it does, you can ask for a partial refund).

Dealing with further problems

If the repair’s unsuccessful, you can ask for a replacement but if even this doesn’t stop the problem – and the motor still starts to conk out with your second new mower - what next?

At this point, you should then be able to claim a part-refund.

The store will be entitled to knock off a fair bit from the original price you paid to take into account the “successful usage” you managed to get from it.

It’s also worth stressing that some stores won’t even get as far as suggesting a repair or replacement and will simply offer you a partial refund immediately (or allow you to keep the goods but give you some money back for the fault).

However, it can only do this if the cost of repair is more than the value of your goods or could take months to sort out.

Rip-off Britain is here to stay

Consumer champion, Sam Dunn tells Confused.com warns us that the most common day to day rip-offs are here to stay.

If you took the reins of a major UK company, would you instinctively hustle your customers?

I only wonder because every month or so, another swathe of the British public falls victim to hucksterish rip-offs.

Last week, Consumer organisation Which? filed a so-called “super complaint” with the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in a bid to kibosh "rip off" surcharges levied by companies on debit and credit card transactions.

Teams of Which? researchers discovered that, while the cost to companies for processing a payment by debit card hovers around 20p and is no more than 2 per cent of the transaction value for a credit card,  companies regularly charge far higher fees.

Egregious examples included train-ticket booking site the Trainline slapping on a £3.50 charge for credit card payments while Eurostar laid it on extra thick at £4.

Naturally, the retailers themselves contend that they’re trying to recoup the cost of charges levied to them by banks and card issuers.

The Which? salvo is just the latest in a frankly ludicrous litany of criminal charges and rapacious rip-offs that continue to leave the average UK punter blinking in a state of incomprehension.

What could go wrong with council tax band valuations? Easy: estate agents drove down streets in second gear and wrongly valued some 400,000+ homes leaving many overpaying thousands since the early 1990s.

Or how about the sale of over-priced payment protection insurance on credit cards and personal loans?

And don’t forget monstrous personal pension mis-selling in the late 1980s where providers creamed the fattest of commissions for their own pay packets while convincing retirement savers to swap a secure final salary scheme for the vagaries of the stock markets.

Then there’s endowment mortgages (cheap interest-only home loans were an easier selling point than complex stock market-related endowments), high-risk precipice bonds for elderly savers, door-step selling, split cap investment trusts….

It would all seem to suggest that being a modern-day mountebank is either too lucrative to ignore – hang the inevitable penalty fines that ultimately come with it! - or that it doesn’t take much to swindle the ordinary British customer.

But I wonder how much of it is vanquished victims and the rest middling mugs?

Part of the problem is that enough of us, when faced with outrageous card charge hikes or preposterous sales pitches, still plough ahead and buy anyway.

In worst-case scenarios, many won’t have a choice because of lack of income or poor knowledge – especially among the vulnerable and elderly – and that’s a nasty exploitative situation we can all do without.

However, it’s also the case that many more who do have a choice will be complacent and won’t think to cast even a fleeting glance at small print; won’t blink at a spiralling credit card charge because they can afford it; or are simply too trusting to ever balk at a particular charge and say ‘Excuse me, did you just say that would cost me X? I’ll have to think again.’

Of course, there’s greed too: barrelling headlong into a financial arrangement – take your pick from store finance to hire purchase or credit card promotion – simply to get your hands on favoured goods is nobody’s fault but our own.

Unfortunately, all these flaws favour those with money over those without: and if enough of the former carry on with their daily financial routines like this, it’ll simply get worse for the latter.

Rip-offs thrive in such adverse conditions as, when consumers don’t all pull in the same direction, their overall protection remains stunted.

Until this changes, all manner of snake oil salesmen, profiteers and traders seeking to make a fast buck – whether dressed up in corporate suits or flogging fakes in back streets - will continue to creep into our lives.

So look lively: the rip-off is here to stay for a long while yet.

Don't give in to gormless and poorly-trained staff

Consumer champion, Sam Dunn tells Confused.com how to take a stand against shop staff who refuse you a refund.

It’s a stomach-churning moment: you traipse back to a store to show your malfunctioning – or simply plain bust – goods to a member of staff whose blank face gawps back with a hopeless: “It’s not our problem”.

Gormless, unhelpful and poorly-trained shop staff create merry hell for customers who are simply exercising their legal rights to a repair, refund or replacement.

“If it’s passed its one-year guarantee, there’s nothing we can do”; You could try the manufacturer”; and “If you don’t have a receipt, there’s really nothing we can do” are three of the most galling – and ridiculously wrong – excuses.

You don’t need a receipt

Customers’ howls of anguish echo everywhere, from major music stores to high-street electronics shops and furniture warehouses to big-name retailers.

In a capacity as a consumer champion for other publications, I’ve read hundreds of emails from readers who have run into either a wall of ignorance or woeful ineptitude from sales staff who know literally nothing about customers’ rights.

If wilful, it’s a scandal but I suspect it’s more a case that – despite the negative impression it leaves – stores have little incentive to teach staff the ins and outs of the key Sale of Goods Act 1979 consumer protection law.

After all, for every bolshy customer who takes it all the way to head office, there will be a dozen who don’t. So don’t be fazed by know-nothing shop staff: here’s the protocol to put them back in their box.

Know your consumer rights

When a staff member claims that since a typical one-year guarantee has run out “There’s nothing more we can do”, first point out that your consumer rights don’t run out at the same time as the manufacturer’s guarantee.

Explain that for any number of goods – whether a microwave or washing machine, DVD or CD, lawn mower or laptop – they will be expected to last for a reasonable amount of time, usually a few years.

When he or she raises an eyebrow, stress that the Sale of Goods Act 1979 demands that what you bought should be of satisfactory quality, be fit for purpose and as described, and last for a reasonable amount of time – and that your goods clearly fall flat on whichever count applies.

Or, in the sadly all-too-common incidence of staff telling you to take it to the manufacturer, remind them that their store has a legal duty to sort it out for you; similarly, as long as the goods are faulty, you don’t need a receipt as a credit card or bank statement will suffice.

With a dash of luck, you might strike gold with a savvy employee quick to see the error of their ways.
Sadly, you’re more likely to draw a blank, so ask to speak to a senior manager and detail exactly what’s wrong – in many cases, you may get a refund or replacement on the spot.

But expect the worst: a refusal and suggestion to take it up with head office.

Don’t give up when the shop refuses your refund

This is no setback: you’ve now to simply put your complaint in writing to customer complaints and make sure you also send a copy to the chief executive’s office. Starting with your official letter of complaint, your arsenal of weapons is considerable - Trading Standards and, ultimately, the small claims court (for goods up to £5,000), so don’t lose any heart.

Most companies will swiftly buckle once they realise they’re in legal hot water but some will hold on for a spell to test your resolve. 

A quick final rule: never lose your rag with staff

Although you might think that blowing your top could help resolve a dispute in your favour, managers will usually fully back staff without knowing the ins and outs of any given situation. It’ll also weaken your status in any final resolution as an aggressive or intimidating approach to staff will give companies leeway to complain about your behaviour in any protracted dispute.