Refund delays?

[MSKelly]

Hi all,

I couple of weeks ago I purchased a clearance Printer (HP K8600dn) online from Microwarehouse (part of the PC world group) which was advertised as being in "good working order" with only the yellow cartridge being missing, so I also bought a yellow cartridge as well so I'd be up and running with the printer right away.

Unfortunately the printer arrived faulty, with it flashing error messages for nearly everything (including the brand new yellow cart) and with the carriage and roller motors completely dead.

Further inspection revealed a considerable ink leak inside the printer from the yellow ink tube, so much so there was signs of pooled ink at the bottom and even dried-in ink was visible on some of the case seams as well. It seems obvious this leak is widespread enough to have damaged the printers electronics so the thing was effectively DOA.

 

On seeing this I tried to use the online RMA system but kept getting an error message, so I e-mailed customer services (with no reply) and finally phoned them to report the problem. On the phone they quickly arranged a return and sent a courier around the next day to pick both the printer and (now useless to me) yellow cartridge. Checking the online tracking they took receipt of the printer the following day (last Thursday) so I then waited for the refund to show up in my account.

 

Well, this monday it did, but I had only been refunded for the yellow cartridge. The printer, which is obviously what cost a lot more, had not been refunded. I called again and the lady I spoke to checked the details, confirmed they had taken receipt of the items and that I had been refunded for the cartridge only. She could offer no explanation as to why no refund had been paid back to my card for the printer though, so she raised a 'query' and assured me I should see the refund in a couple of days.

Still no refund though.

 

Anyways, I am going to give them until tomorrow and if the refund is still a no show I will be on the phone again, but first I wanted to check what my rights are in case they do give me any hassle. The reason I am asking is they have a crafty little clause in their T&C stating they do not guarantee a clearance item's description. I cant see how this can apply to supplying a faulty DOA product advertised as working, but I would like to know just what legal info I will need to tell/quote to them if I do get given the runaround.

 

My thanks in advance for any help anyone can give.

[curofone]

i could be completly wrong on this as i am not from a legal background at all and i am bit surprised that someone with a lot more knowledge than me has not commented yet but does a company not have upto 28 to credit a refund back to a customer? might have got the amount of days wrong there but i thought it was around a month.

[trident25]

The SOGA states;

 

If goods do not conform to contract at the time of sale, purchasers can request their money back "within a reasonable time". (This is not defined and will depend on circumstances)

DSGi will class a reasonable period of time as 28 days, this will be 28 days from the faulty product being received back by them.

 

Although it is not the norm for refunds to take longer than 7 - 10 working days. When a faulty product is received back to DSGi it will be sent to the workshop to verify the fault, this would have been done with the printer but not the toner. This could explain why you got a refund for the toner much faster. The fault confirmation is normally done a couple of days after being received, so probably the following Monday.

 

Another thing to remember is that once DSGi has authorised the refund to your account it can take up to 3 working days for your bank to credit the refund to your account. This is something that DSGi have no control over.

Edited February 16, 2009 by trident25

[gyzmo]

Err, SoGA does not say that at all. In fact, the most relevant legislaion is the Distance Selling Regs, which require that refunds are given "as soon as possible" and within any case, 30 days from notice of cancellation.

[Renzokuken]

DSGi's policy is usualy 7-10 working days maximum, unless there are any problems.

 

I'd get on to the customer service line if it hasn't been credited back to your card just incase something is wrong.

[mitch161]

ink cartridges are consumables and are thrown away basically, not tested and refunded pretty much immediately. because of weekend they received it thursday, processed refund friday probably and bank received money monday.

 

the printer however needs testing. so again with weekend it might not even be investigated till the monday, may take 7 days to look into and then refund processed after that. if after worse case scenario it not done within 14 days -28 days pressure them to find engineer/investigation report.

 

if it says refund denied due to customer neglect tell them it a opened item and engineer should notice the dried ink is too dry to have happened in the short time you had printer

[gyzmo]

what???