Gillian asked for our help after being denied a refund for a misleading phone purchase on an online auction website.
What happened
Gillian saw a well-known brand of smartphone listed on an online auction website. She bought it for £50 using her e-money account.
When the phone was delivered, she found it was a brand she’d never heard of. All the functions were in Chinese. And Gillian realised she couldn’t use the phone.
She complained to the seller but he said she didn’t qualify for a refund. He told her he’d never claimed the phone was made by a well-known brand, and that she’d made a mistake.
Gillian then spoke to the e-money business, asking for her money back. The customer service adviser told her she couldn’t claim a refund. They said the phone hadn’t been described in a way that suggested it was made by the well-known brand. They also told Gillian she should have realised the phone wasn’t a premium brand because of its low price.
Gillian referred her complaint to us.
What we said
Though we don’t handle complaints about sellers on online auction sites, we do manage complaints about e-money businesses.
We started by looking at the terms and conditions of Gillian’s e-money account. These said she was entitled to a refund from the e-money business in certain circumstances, including where goods differed significantly from the seller’s description of them.
We checked the description of the phone that had appeared on the auction website. We thought it clearly suggested that the phone was made by the well-known brand. The brand was not only mentioned in the heading but was also referred to several times in the description.
We accepted that the price was unusually low and might have aroused suspicion. But we thought the description would have led any reasonable person to believe they were buying a phone made by the well-known brand.
So, we upheld Gillian’s complaint. and requested a refund for her. We told the e-money business to refund Gillian the amount she’d paid for the phone and to reimburse her for all related postage costs, including the cost of returning the phone.