Laura Ashley unused wallpaper refund

[nergelag]

I bought 7 rolls of wallpaper at Laura Ashley in their sale. As I paid for the wallpaper the shop assistant said that if I didn't use any rolls of wallpaper, as long as I hadn't opened the roll that I could bring it back for a refund. I thought this was such a good deal that I bought an extra roll just in case. This was an early stage in my decoration and having stripped the old wallpaper, painted the woodwork and finally put the new paper up, best part of 3 months had gone by. I found I had one spare roll of wallpaper, so I took it back for the promised refund. When I got there they told me that the shop assistant had given me the wrong advice and that I should have read the back of the receipt which stated that I had to bring the roll back within 28 days to get a refund. Had she said this originally, there is no way I would have bought the extra roll, given the chance of stripping, painting and wallpapering within a month was nil. They offered me a voucher, but this would have a one month time limit so I refused this and insisted they refund the money as they had originally promised they would. They refused. I put my complaint in writing to their complaints department who responded with exactly the same offer. I have tried to call them but always get a message service and they never return my calls. Does anyone know what the legal position is with this?

[Amethyst]

Re: Laura Ashley unused wallpaper refund

As you bought the item in store Laura Ashley are not obliged to accept a return unless the wallpaper was faulty, not as described, or unfit for purpose. It doesn't appear that is the case.

The 28 days return because of changing your mind/not using etc is a store policy - Laura Ashley have a 28 day returns policy and as such that forms part of the contract of sale so they must accept returns in line with that policy. Anything outside of that is entirely at their discretion and a voucher is a good compromise.

However if you want to continue pushing for a full cash refund via Laura Ashley complaints dept/head office then possibly as the sales assistant didn't advise you of the 28 day limit and that advice influenced your decision to purchase the additional roll then I'd say that was the pre contract information (unless it was displayed in the store etc) - the information on the back of the receipt wasn't available until after the purchase.

Hope that helps a little bit.

[CleverClogs]

Re: Laura Ashley unused wallpaper refund

As you bought the item in store Laura Ashley are not obliged to accept a return unless the wallpaper was faulty, not as described, or unfit for purpose. It doesn't appear that is the case.

The 28 days return because of changing your mind/not using etc is a store policy - Laura Ashley have a 28 day returns policy and as such that forms part of the contract of sale so they must accept returns in line with that policy. Anything outside of that is entirely at their discretion and a voucher is a good compromise.

However if you want to continue pushing for a full cash refund via Laura Ashley complaints dept/head office then possibly as the sales assistant didn't advise you of the 28 day limit and that advice influenced your decision to purchase the additional roll then I'd say that was the pre contract information (unless it was displayed in the store etc) - the information on the back of the receipt wasn't available until after the purchase.

Exactly so - that condition was imposed too late to be part of the contract with the store, whereas the representation made by the sales assistant would have been. The difficulty, of course, would be one of proving what she had said.

A sensible compromise would be to persuade the store to issue a credit note or voucher of unlimited validity.

[nergelag]

Re: Laura Ashley unused wallpaper refund

Thanks for your responses - I'm currently trying to negotiate with Laura Ashley's complaints department (but they are pretty terrible at returning my calls) and this is a good point to make.

[nergelag]

Re: Laura Ashley unused wallpaper refund

Just to complete the story. The lady in complaints said she had talked to the people in the store and that they had no memory of having made this offer and anyway that it would be impossible for me to prove anyone had said that to me, which seemed less than sympathetic to say the least. To be fair she kept offering a voucher, but one with a 21 day time limit, which given I had just spent a large amount of money on paper, paint and lampshades at Laura Ashley and completed my decorating, was of little use to me.

I managed to resolve the matter by finding the e-mail address of the CEO of Laura Ashley from CEO e-mail addresses - CEO email address - chief executive officer - managing director list - UK - US - Asia - customer services - customer care and wrote to her. They eventually agreed to refund the price of the roll and the cost of posting it to them. Needless to say, I have not shopped at Laura Ashley since.

Overall, I'm astonished by the whole experience. I work for a bank, even though we are one of the smaller ones - a much slated type of institution just now, but we wouldn't dream of carrying on like this. Our general approach after a few enquiries is to believe the customer and usually to compensate them, if only on the principle that its a lot cheaper to retain an existing customer than to get a new one. We also want our customers to say nice things about us to their friends, or at the very least not say nasty things - which is of course what I do if Laura Ashley ever comes up in conversation with my friends.