Hi all, I wonder if anyone can confirm or deny this please.
I bought a Nikon camera on 22 July 2014, everything was great until last week (27th Oct) when we were on holiday, the camera would turn on and all functions worked fine except there was nothing on the screen when taking photos and all photos taken were solid black, similar to having the lens cover in place - but it wasn't.
Upon returning from holiday I searched for the receipt in order to return it to our local Argos store, whilst I found everything else - box, instructions, CD etc I could not locate the receipt.
Luckily (or so I thought) I had paid for it via my Argos card, so I printed off the statement showing the date although the price was more than the camera as I also made other purchases at the same time, I also printed emails I had received showing my reservation details.
I took all the paperwork and box etc to my local store, the store manager stated that as it was a Nikon it *must* be sent away for repair and for that to happen I *must* provide a receipt! Because I had purchased the camera at another store my local store could not pull up a copy of the receipt and after disappearing for 20 minutes he returned to state he could not get through to the other store for them to fax a copy through but he had an alternative on this occasion..... He would replace it with one from stock!
Excellent I thought, but then came the kicker - there where none in stock within a 60 mile radius, I showed him on my phone that whilst they didn't have the same colour in stock they actually had one of a different colour - exactly the same camera, specs, accessories etc just black and not purple. For this he wanted another £20 as it was priced at £20 more (£119.99) than I had paid (£99.99) (the web page for the new black model did state that the camera had been sold for the lower price of £99.99 in the previous 6 months so this in essence was a price increase).
I was left with either paying the £20 or spending the around same amount in fuel to make the 120 mile round trip to pick up one of the same colour. To make things more confusing he stated the original purple colour camera was actually now priced at £84.99, when I asked if I would receive a refund of the difference he laughed....so it's ok to charge me more when the price had increased but not refund when the price had decreased, win win for Argos.
Normally I would just take the hit but something about the managers smug attitude really got my back up - £20 is not a lot but as a matter of principle I don't know if this 'supplementary' charge should have applied.
Can anyone shed any light if they are allowed to do this?
Apologies for the long winded post but I like to get all the facts out in one go
Many thanks
