Long story short - colleague at work recently purchased some 1k mark money worth of bits to build his PC - put your pitchforks down - nothing to do with OCUK service - the purchase was from competitor I shall not name - and among other things he bought Gigabyte X79 U5 board thing and I7 3820 CPU.
Upon arrival last week he put all the bits together and things looked DOA. All lights on the motherboard lit up, but no one's at home, no post, no beep, just fans spinning, that's it. He called the place up early this week, they told him to send both motherboard and chip back, because neither him nor the support guys on the phone could figure out whether it was the CPU or mobo. Fair enough.
Yesterday he received an email stating that the motherboard, out of the box, was not able to recognise the CPU, and new bios, several revisions higher had to be flashed by the support guys before both could boot together. However, because there is nothing physically wrong with the parts, support marked the return as "no fault found" and my mate was expected to fork out £25 + VAT "non faulty goods returned" fee before motherboard and CPU should be shipped back/returned to him. He tried to argue, but was told it was not the stores fault motherboard didn't recognise CPU and there is nothing wrong with both parts, so charge has to be paid and that's it. To not delay matters further, with the rest of the rig ready and open on office desk he did pay and both parts are now on the way back to him.
Now to be honest, this peed me off, even as a bystander. On one hand, I totally understand why retailer would have such charge in place - time = money and all that. On the other hand though - they sell socket 2011 motherboard that doesn't work with current socket 2011 CPUs out of the box. This incompatibility is not listed anywhere on the website at the point of sale. Surely it not reasonable to expect the buyer to have another, older CPU to hand to reflash the bios after arrival and make it compatible with newer CPU? Therefore in my book, the goods sold were not fit for purpose at point of sale, and any such incompatibility should be a matter between seller and their supplier and no additional charges should be demanded?
What's your advice forumites, any legal blurb that could be thrown at the shop in this case?
Upon arrival last week he put all the bits together and things looked DOA. All lights on the motherboard lit up, but no one's at home, no post, no beep, just fans spinning, that's it. He called the place up early this week, they told him to send both motherboard and chip back, because neither him nor the support guys on the phone could figure out whether it was the CPU or mobo. Fair enough.
Yesterday he received an email stating that the motherboard, out of the box, was not able to recognise the CPU, and new bios, several revisions higher had to be flashed by the support guys before both could boot together. However, because there is nothing physically wrong with the parts, support marked the return as "no fault found" and my mate was expected to fork out £25 + VAT "non faulty goods returned" fee before motherboard and CPU should be shipped back/returned to him. He tried to argue, but was told it was not the stores fault motherboard didn't recognise CPU and there is nothing wrong with both parts, so charge has to be paid and that's it. To not delay matters further, with the rest of the rig ready and open on office desk he did pay and both parts are now on the way back to him.
Now to be honest, this peed me off, even as a bystander. On one hand, I totally understand why retailer would have such charge in place - time = money and all that. On the other hand though - they sell socket 2011 motherboard that doesn't work with current socket 2011 CPUs out of the box. This incompatibility is not listed anywhere on the website at the point of sale. Surely it not reasonable to expect the buyer to have another, older CPU to hand to reflash the bios after arrival and make it compatible with newer CPU? Therefore in my book, the goods sold were not fit for purpose at point of sale, and any such incompatibility should be a matter between seller and their supplier and no additional charges should be demanded?
What's your advice forumites, any legal blurb that could be thrown at the shop in this case?