PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

This is a long story but worth reading if your laptop has blown up outside its guarantee :mad:

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

Rhonda plugged her laptop in to charge. Fortunately she week back in the bedroom as she could smell burning. There was smoke coming out of the laptop and it was making a crackling noise.

This was a few days after Mothers Day, the laptop had been a gift the year before from the children and had been purchased a couple of weeks before from PC World.

I was on nights at the time, I said to Rhonda if she dug out the receipt, I would take it back to PC World even though it was more than 12 months old. I think she spent the whole day looking for it but could not find it.

About a week later I was telling Lindsay the story, she suggested I should be able to use a bank or credit card statement as proof of purchase if I could not find the receipt. That was the plan and the following day I was off to PC World with my credit card statement and a very smelly laptop back in its box.

I spoke with a chap on the customer service counter. I explained the laptop had almost caught fire and that is was 13 months old. He asked if it had extended warranty or a cover plan on it. I said that it did not. He said that unfortunately there was nothing they could do. I told him that under the Sale of Goods Act the laptop should be expected to last a reasonable amount of time and did he think 13 months was a reasonable life for a laptop. At first he said I would have to contact the manufacturer, I reminded him that my rights were with the supplier and not the manufacturer. He then said I would need to prove the goods were faulty from new. I said that was not the case and could I speak with the store manager.

Five minutes later and the manager arrived. I explained what the laptop had done and that it was 13 months old, I then said "that gent there, does not appear to understand my rights under the Sale of Goods Act and that my rights are with the store where the item was purchased".

Straight away he said that he would have to email the manufacturer to see if they would agree to repair it. I again said it was not the manufacturers responsibility but I did not mind if they did accept to repair it. I did say that if they did not repair it then we would be having this conversation again.

He printed out a standard repair agreement form which I read. There was a bit that said I agreed to pay all repair costs. I told the manager that I did not agree with that. He said it did not apply in this case so I crossed it out and signed the paper.

This was almost two weeks ago. Yesterday I called in to the store again to see what was talking so long and if they had agreed to repair it. I spoke with the same manager, he said they were unable to repair the laptop. I though he meant they were not going to so was ready for an interesting conversation. He actually meant unable because it was completely fried. He said head office had authorised him to replace the 13 month old faulty laptop out of its 12 month guarantee with a new one.

He called a sales assistant over who showed me a few laptops I could select from. I made my choice and waited for her at the counter. She asked if I wanted to take out the cover plan on it in case it failed after 12 months - I said why would I want too? This new one is replacing a faulty one that was 13 months old, she looked confused and said " Oh right, it it?"

I was extremely pleased with the outcome and think PC World met my rights extremely well. I was disappointed that only the manager appeared to understand my rights, the sales assistants really do need more training.

So if you have something that is over 12 months old and dies on you, read up on The Sale of Goods Act and get back to the shop.

If anyone managed to read this far without killing themselves have you had a similar experience, good or bad with faulty goods?

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

Well done Neil........this is the first time I have heard of anyone getting any joy at all from PC World.
The staff there know precious little about anything except taking money off unsuspecting customers.

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

good on you Neil,some people may have just thrown theirs away if they thought it was 'out of guarantee'

this just shows that we are entitled to more than we think even after the specified date

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

good result,well done neil, very handy fer folk to be aware of.:)

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

Excellent result Neil, I watch Watchdog on a regular basis and they highlight this regularly, just glad you got a result, not to mention the Brownie points from your better half:D

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

Knowing Neil he would have given his wife his old laptop and kept the new one for himself:D

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

No thanks, I am happy with my NC10

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

Excellent result! I will keep this in mind.

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

When you take the Macbook back :D

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

You have a very low opinion of Neil, mick, wonder why that is:rolleyes: :D

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

Great result Neil, not a personnel experience but saw on a TV programme where a bloke had a similar experience with PC World. They wouldn't entertain him so he got Dom Littlewood on the job. Got a new lap-top and loads of extras in the end.

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

Now if only comet were the same... had to fight for weeks for them to give me a battery with my laptop since they lost it... now it doesn't work. Round 2...

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

Thanks for that, Neil.

I wouldn't have thought there was any hope of getting it replaced if it was out of guarantee.

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

power to the people well done,pc world tried to do this to somebody i know and they were trying to do the same thing still in the process of getting a 400 pound computer fixed or replaced...

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

'erindoors laptop is playing up. We think the hard-drive is corrupt somehow as it does not boot up normally. We have to boot up in restore mode - F11 - and it then works near perfect. Would that be covered by the same thing as it is only 9 months old??

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

It sounds like a windows software fault that. First thing they would tell you to do is back up any important data - photos, documents, email etc and then use the restore feature of the laptop to put the software back to like it was when it was new. If it still does not work correctly without you installing anything then it is faulty and needs to go back.

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

We've done the full system restore thing Neil. Will be taking it back then. Cheers!

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

You can quote the Sale of Goods Act and not fit for purpose for pretty much anything, I have done so with a pair of shoes before now, after being told by some daft assistant that they "weren't designed for outdoor wear" Haahaa !
Good result there Neil !:mosher:

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

Thanks Lindsay and thank you for suggesting using a statement as proof of purchase - they did not even ask for my receipt, just checked on there system when I had bought it.

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

I thought the battery had gone on my laptop, I planned to get a new one but never got around to it. It probably went within warranty too. Anyway Its getting a new free case at the moment, apple phoned me up and said that in fact it was not the battery but the motherboard. They inform me that its 8 months out of warranty.

I got it from PC World, so I am off there tomorrow to try and get something done. I don't think 1.5 years is at all reasonable for the life of a laptop! Especially not at the macbook price range!

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

I thought you were going there today after leaving me and katex ......

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

Have a read of this Consumer rights: how to make 'em play fair...

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

i was in there yesterday. I had pre ordered a memory stick for a pc for someone.-anyway they didn't have one on the shelf despite tnheir system saying they had. Whilst they went in the back i looked about and found what i wantedin one of the 'bins' dotted about. Even better it had a sticker of 7.99 on it instead of 29.99. So i took it to the counter and said i'd have this instead. Unfortunately he knew the SOGA and simply said he would withdraw it from sale(as they can) . i did try the old "poor customer service" line but they were having none of it :o(

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I see all the staff know the rules when it comes to saving them money but only the manager when it ends up costing them money.

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

I dont get if it was in the bin with a reduce price why he remove it from sale.

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

Cheers Neil!

shillelagh I was going to, but had to re-arrange as people were not ready. :rolleyes::D

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

Posted via Mobile Device
Because he claimed it was incorrectly priced. He reckoned some customer must have put the price sticker on it.

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

Customers changing stickers used to happen all the time at Music Zone, idiots didn't realise we had price lookup on the tills so the correct price came up anyway, if challenged I used to withdraw item from sale and politely point out that trying to obtain goods by deception was illegal, usually did the trick!:rolleyes:

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

Posted via Mobile Device

Heh, thing is the sticker wa obviously well stuck on as you couldn't even remove it if you tried and it was one of those 'security ' boxes so the only people who could have put the memory in was the staff. I reckon some one hadn't checked what price was on the other side. I knew i couldn't 'force' the sale so tried the 'you should honour as good Google Page Ranking' line but they were having none of it.....

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

You should have pointed out the big sign in the Tech Guys ( stop laughing ) little glass room. It says "Remember the answer to any reasonable request is yes"

Re: PC World - My Sale of Goods Act Experience
 

pretty surprised you got that result neil! well done!!

pc world are oft mentioned for their awful service but this is great!