The key really is when they found out it was faulty.
Huge difference between finding out a couple of days before you had the problem, versus finding out before you even ordered.
If you did want to pursue it, that would really be the crux of the matter.
Shoddy either way, and I wouldn't accept anything less than them paying for the uplift/return shipping.
Jay, if I'm reading your first post correctly, then this watercooler is brand new ... a few hours old. If so, did you collect in person or mail-order? I'm assuming from your location that it was probably mail-order.
If so, your first option is simply to reject the goods under the Distance Selling Regulations. To do that, you MUST notify the seller in a permanent form (i.e. email, letter, fax, etc) and NOT by phone, within 7 working days starting the day after you received the goods.
Generally, if you cancel under the DSR, and providing the seller has included a condition in their T&Cs, you'd have to pay postage. However, in the event that you're returning them because they breach some contractual term (such as Sale of Goods Act requirements) then that's an exception to the general case and the cost of returning them is down to the seller, NOT you.
Moreover, under the Sale of Goods Act (as amended), if goods are faulty and cause other damage, the seller is responsible for that as well.
Someone mentioned power supply failures. I had a PSU blow up a few years back, and it took out half the system with it, including several hard drives, a couple of optical drives (including a £300 drive) and an expensive graphics card. I notified the seller's tech manager, and they immediately admitted that they'd been sent a defective batch of PSUs, and gave me an RMA together with an assurance that their insurance covered them for consequential loss in situations like this.
The seller in question? Didn't I say? OcUK.
So before people wade in too deeply against OcUK and their customer service, my personal experience with a very similar situation was that they weren't a problem at all. Of course, that's just one case, but it is personal experience.
Jay, assuming this device died as you say and assuming I'm right about the age, the you most certainly do have a claim for any damage it caused, and it certainly IS the seller's responsibility to either arrange collection at their expense or reimburse your postage costs.
Of course, there's an easy way and a hard way to go about this. The easy way is by calm discussion, and perhaps a bit of give and take, and the hard way is the small claims court. In my opinion, it's ALWAYS worth going the easy way if you possibly can. That generally involves not threatening court action because retailers are fully aware that a high percentage of people will bluster about that while their head of steam is up, but when push comes to shove, probably won't follow through with it.
So threatening that route may well achieve nothing more than putting their backs up and being told "so sue then". Therefore, I'd advise against threatening that unless you really, actually seriously are prepared to do it if you have to. But if you do, it's neither particularly hard, nor onerous, nor expensive to do.
Far better is to talk to OcUK again, perhaps to the technical manager, and explain, calmly and rationally, what the situation is. You can always drop back to court action if need be, but if you go down that route too soon, it's then very hard to get back to sorting it out amicably.
But at the end of the day, provided the cooler genuinely is faulty, the cost of return postage is the seller's responsibility, not yours, however much the seller might try to convince you otherwise. The question for you is whether the cost of that postage is worth perhaps initiating a full-blown fight over? Maybe it is, or maybe you'll bear that for an easy life.
And there's another little known quirk in the Distance Selling Regs, too. If you reject goods under the DSR, the seller has a statutory duty to refund you within 30 days, and to do it within 30 days whether or not they have their goods back. They are NOT legally entitled to hold on to the refund until the goods are returned, and are breaking the law if they do.
Your responsibility is to take reasonable care of the goods until they arrange collection (though there's time limits on that, too). That means you don't further damage them, ditch them, sell them, etc, and it also implies you stop using them (though that doesn't sound like a problem in this case). If you cancel, then the goods now belong to the seller, and you're expected to take reasonable care until they collect.
But notice where that puts the onus. If you use the DSR, they MUST refund you, and within 30 days in any event, whether or not they have their goods back. It's also down to them to collect their goods. If, for some reason, you refused to return the goods, the seller would then have a case for action against you in court. But that's the route they'd have to take. It STILL isn't justification for them delaying that refund beyond 30 days at most.
So ... assuming the goods are new enough to use the DSR (which is why I asked that), you could tell them you want to cancel under the DSR and require a refund (including your shipping costs) to be issued. You can also tell them to arrange collection of the faulty goods, and let them worry about paying for couriers.
If the refund you're entitled to under the DSR doesn't materialise, or doesn't materialise in full, then you can still use the Small Claims Court. It's also worth noting that under the SoGA, it is presumed that any fault occurring within the first 6 months existed when the goods were sold, unless the seller can prove (to a court) otherwise. So if this leak is down to damage you've caused (such as by incorrect fitment, etc) and that can be proven, you have no SoGA case. But otherwise, the presumption is in your favour and the onus to prove otherwise is on the seller.
If the facts are as you've suggested, I rather doubt that any retailer is going to let a case like this get to court .... though they may call your bluff if you threaten it. Because, you see, if it does go to court, it certainly sounds like they'll lose (though there's one critical criteria to this, see below) and if they lose, all they do is end up adding court fees and your expenses to the claim. And, as a company with assets, you then have a variety of options open to you to force payment, ranging from sending in bailiffs to freezing bank accounts or even applying for a winding up order if the court award is defaulted.
But do you want to do it the hard way? Is it worth the hassle? Only you can answer that.
The critical point I mentioned?
Courts don't like frivolous cases, they don't like their time being wasted unnecessarily and they emphatically don't like unreasonable attitudes or vindictiveness. Even an apparently open and shut case can be lost if you're perceived to have been unreasonable in your dealings with the seller. So you MUST be able to show that you've been reasonable at every step, and that you've given every reasonable opportunity for this to be sorted out without involving a court. And that means keeping evidence. Personally, were I even half-contemplating that a dispute might end up in court, I'd be doing everything possible in writing, not by phone, and if I did use the phone, I'd keep notes of dates, times, people spoken to, matters discussed and then confirm that to them in writing afterwards. There's plenty of places you can get help, if needed, on wording such letters, but generally, they need to make your expectations (such as a refund) clear, and also to make clear any timeframes, which must again be reasonable.
EDIT - I'm also assuming you're a consumer, and that this wasn't a business purchase (though again, I'd have thought PC water-coolers were an unusual business purchase, but it's certainly possible). The Distance Selling Regs are consumer protection.
Thanks for the post Saracen - pretty much have the same viewpoint on this - rather than going in 'bull in a china shop' let the facts speak for themselves...
ps3ud0
will give them a call and test the water (no pun intended). I am just happy it did so little damage to be honest.
Last edited by Jay; 04-01-2008 at 02:39 PM.
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I just gave them quick call
They said there is nothing they can do and maybe swiftech can help me out.
I will have to double check they refund me the P&P to send the unit back to them
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It's a nightmare scenario to be caught in to be honest, as a retailer I can easily imagine getting a fair few phone calls about watercooling trashing systems that's really the users fault and from your point of view, you know you didn't do anything wrong.
Personally, I'd get a little bit harsher with them, phone them up again and ask if they could explain why they aren't liable for damage if the unit is indeed at fault and why their insurance wouldn't cover this. If they just make ham excuses, start with the complaints letters, firstly as Saracen advised, rejecting the unit both under the DSR and Sales of Goods acts (might as well do both!) and add a point that you're still willing to consider a compromise as the board isn't unusuable, but damaged (assuming you are that is!)
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This is bunny and friends. He is fed up waiting for everyone to help him out, and decided to help himself instead!
I have emailed them and called them about the fault and they won't actually tell me what the fault was. They just keep saying the money has been refunded.
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Well, personally I wouldn't be interested in why they think they aren't liable for consequential loss. If the unit was faulty and caused damage, a claim exists, and it exists regardless of whether their insurance covers them or not - though in my case I was certainly told it did. That was some years ago, though.Originally Posted by Lucio
But, of course, that liability does depend on the goods not conforming to contract at the time of sale .... i.e. they were faulty (for example). As i said, if the problem was down to faulty fitting or misuse, damage by the buyer, etc, then they aren't liable.
And it isn't just damaged goods that they're liable for. They could also be liable for expenses incurred. By a general note of caution here, for anyone thinking it's a good chance to stick them with a bill .... a duty also lies on the consumer to mitigate their losses in relation to any contract breach. You have to be reasonable in what you claim, and it has to be directly caused by the breach. In this case, there may well be no other expenses or costs caused. But, at the end of the day, the general principle is certainly that if goods don't conform to contract (at time of sale) then consequential losses can be claimed for.
But if, of course, this unit wasn't faulty at time of sale and the damage was caused by the buyer, well, I doubt they'd have refunded if they thought that were the case, or at least, that they could prove it. But as I said earlier, for the first 6 months, the burden of proof is on the seller.
And, in the general case rather than relating to this instance, I've certainly seen numerous times where angry consumers have tried to take back goods as "faulty" that were indeed damaged. On one occasion, a bloke had driven from Leeds down to Bedfordshire (Luton, to be exact) to return a faulty processor. I was standing right next to him at the counter when he started ranting and raving (and swearing, by the way) about being ripped off, and I could see the fault from where I was standing. It was a socket processor (P4 IIRC) and had been inserted, clearly with some force, wrongly oriented and a pin or two was bent double. The assistant subtly questioned the numpty about how he'd installed the chip, which way round it was, etc, and numpty clearly didn't have a clue what the assistant was on about.
On another occasion, I was in a car hifi shop when a bloke came in to collect the car radiator he reserved on the phone. When told they didn't have a radiator in stock (which might have been phrased a bit mischievously, he went off on a rant, demanded to see the owner (who was actually talking to him at the time), and started going on about Sale of Goods Act (never mind that he hadn't bought anything yet), his friend the solicitor, how he'd taken the trouble to ring first and was having his time wasted yada .... yada .... yada, and he went on, and on, and on. A good 5 minute rant.
Then the shop owner calmly pointed out that they're a car stereo shop and don't sell mechanical bits - try the car component shop next door!
And apart from the clowns like these two, retailers also have to be on guard for people that are trying it on, because it's far from the case that everybody is honest. There are people that will change their mind, or regret buying something, damage it deliberately and then take it back for a refund. And the guy in that car stereo shop even had one bloke bring in a unit as "faulty" that had been stolen from that very shop! He ended up explaining himself to the local constabulary.
Anyway, I am NOT suggesting that jay falls into that "numpty" category, but it is an example of what retailers have to deal with. Which is why most retailers develop a thick skin and a healthy scepticism.
Well, providing you're getting your money back (inc postage, both ways), and if you're not pursuing any consequential damage, I'd have thought what the fault was was pretty irrelevant. They are under an obligation to refund in relation to faulty goods, but I'm not aware of any obligation to explain the nature of the fault .... however irritating that might be.
I have had some dealings of purchasing goods that have not worked out as I expected. Although not IT related, but costing thousands of pounds. The point quoted is excellent advice. Not to be under estimated! Good luck.
Incidentally on a smaller scale I did have problems getting money back from OC. But firm polite professional approach helped. It just took 3 months!
Refund details: WC-028-SW - Swiftech H20 120 Compact Kit (Socket 462/478/LGA775)
£74.99 Subtotal: £75.00
Vat: £13.00
Total: £88.00
no postage refund!
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Worryingly thing is that theres 4 of them on B Grade...
Mate keep trying - Id escalate the complaint and try to speak to a senior manager - they have got to concede the plain fact of why should you lose out financial for a product they sold that was found faulty and demand your postage costs.
Perhaps it might be wise to advise them that they are perhaps lucky you arent claiming for the damage that has occurred to your parts and will consider the case closed if they refund you the postage costs.
ps3ud0
They're probably the replacements from Swift-tech, if there was indeed any 'dodgy batch'.
I know of another OCUK customer whose Apogee Drive pump has just failed catastrophically with water coming out through the seals. It appears to have taken out his motherboard as a result of the coolant leakage. I wonder whether OCUK will replace his motherboard?
I can tell you now, they wont.
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Agreed, incredibly unlikely unless he takes them to court or something serious along those lines.
He will be lucky to get a refund and an appologie...
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