Forced to pay shipping charges on returns

Sconsey

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone knows who is liable for the shipping charges when returning defective goods?

I recently bought a HDD media player from a website for €230, company is located in the UK. It never worked properly from day one, so I talked to their support line a few times who were very helpful and in the end they told me to return it for a replacement, they gave me a website to log my details. All returns must ship to them with a shipping note and a return ID number which is generated from their website....the thing is, in order to generate (and print out) the return shipping label I had to agree to their T's&C's, one of which was that I was responsible for all return shipping charges. So there is no option to return a product unless you accept their terms which I thought was a bit sly. It cost me €37 to post it back to them, so that's an extra cost I had to take on because they sent me a defective product.

I can live with the extra cost but I was wondering what my rights are in this situation. Any ideas?

Sconsey

pow wow

Are you sure it didn't stipulate in the T&Cs that in the case of goods which are deemed by the retailed upon inspection to be faulty they'll refund the return shipping costs? I'd email them/give them a ring again, it's unusual and pretty unfair of them to ask you to pay for the return when the item is defective. Some will make you pay upfront and then reimburse it once they confirm it's a manufacturing fault...maybe the company you bought from falls into that group.

Padraig Mor

This is pretty common - unfortunately (especially on eBay).

Orion

Komplett are the same. Once a fault is confirmed they'll refund the return costs. It's a protection against fradulent claims.