Exercise your consumer rights

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Master Baiter Joined: 18 Dec 2004 Posts: 106

I was in Manchester last week and bought Keetle chips (great hand fried chips). The only problem was that they were stuck together and were soft. I was fairly angry and sent them back to the HQ via letter. I was expecting at least a replacement chip and/or a refund. Instead i got four flavours of chip (2 new) Thumbs up

The moral of the story is: don't be afraid to exercise your consumer rights Smile

Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 10:53 am

The best part is reminding companies of your legal rights when trying to cancel a contract within the cooling off period. Always seems to take more than the one attempt!

So as an addendum to the above, don't be afraid to persevere when you are in the right!

Baiting Guru Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Posts: 11856 Location: UK

Yes, always complain, I got a loaf of Kingsmill bread about a year ago, the bread had some nasty looking brown colour on it, looked like they had accidentally got brown cake mix mixed in with the dough, so it had a marbled affect, sent the company an email, a couple of days later I received loads of vouchers for free bread and rolls, and some other half price vouchers for future purchsases Very Happy

Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 11:52 am

When I was in secondary school one of our English teachers brought a bunch of crap in, which he was unsatisfied with and asked us all to write letters about the products as part of an assignment.

We mailed them all and got absolutely bags of free stuff back, which we were allowed to eat in class. Killer.

Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 12:19 pm

The British are good at grumbling but not good at complaining. We also don't haggle at all. British reserve and all that. Not the done thing, old chap.

Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 12:19 pm

A few weeks ago my mum bought a chicken in Dunnes Stores, the �4.99 one, it had hock burns on the legs. Hock burns are black marks/scabs around the knees of the chicken caused by the chicken sitting in piles of faeces it`s whole life, a clear indicator tht the farmer is not following standard or even basic hygiene procedures, the most basic of these being 'cleaning out the shit'
I brought it back and explained to the manager what was wrong with it. 2 days later i got a call from head office, explaining that the farm was being inspected i was also told that there was a voucher for �20 in the post. which i have yet to receive Evil or Very Mad

i should have contacted a tabloid newspaper

Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 12:52 pm

I complained about finding a fingernail in a birdseye burger once... what did they send me, loadsa free vouchers for birdseye burgers. I sent them back saying I would never eat another of there burgers then a few days later received some vouchers for 'anything birdseye'.

Very Happy

much better!

Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 1:16 pm

SamSpudz wrote:

i should have contacted a tabloid newspaper

It's not too late!

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 1:43 am

I used to go to boarding school and one of our favourite tricks was to put mars bars in the sun for a day or two (making sure they didn't get too hot and melt, it's a fine art you know) then, after a couple of days, put them in the fridge for a day. When you open the wrapper, the chocolate has that musty colour to it, so we then sent it back to the company and they would send us a box of em for free! Very Happy

I think they cottoned on after a while though coz they started to send just the one back. Sad

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 2:15 am

I got $6,000 worth of free sod because I complained one time. I also got $300 worth of closet doors one time because I complained about the stock ones. $500 worth of car repair. Two $300 cell phones for $30. Free food all of the time.

If my service is bad, I just tell them. And then I tell them what I want. They always oblige. Just be firm, sound influential and tell them EXACTLY what you want. Never be mean, just firm. Works like a champ!

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 3:55 am

We bought a rotovator online which said two weeks delivery. After many phone calls and letters (difficult in another language) it hadn't arrived, so we went to the local consumer office who wrote them a letter. We got our rotovator (three months late!) and a 100 euro voucher.

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 4:33 am

I'm on the opposite side of this a lot. The retailers WANT to make customers happy, largely.

On the store level, a happy customer goes away and leaves me alone. Perhaps not the most noble of motives, but it's there. And making people happy does not displease me, either. A store can send the product back to the manufacturer for full credit, or near enough to not care.

As long as the store can get it's money one way or the other, and the vict...err customer is happy, who cares?

Now, the head offices, THEY definitely care about customers, since they operate on percentages, and with massive amounts of product. It costs them like $.50 to make something that sells for $5.00, and if that customer goes back and buys one after their free stuff runs out, they STILL win in the end.

And they also must have entire departments and money set aside for this explicit purpose. The way they lose the most money is by customers getting pissed off and never buying their stuff again, and word of mouth of that kind of thing spreading.

So if a few people abuse it, it falls within their "acceptable losses" margin, and they just shrug it off until it gets too high. Smile

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