Consumeractive
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CASE14
CASE UPDATE
CASE ONGOING CASE CLOSED25 May – 7 June 2022 • Issue 632AVG refunds reader for reactivating 6-year-old subscription
AVG says it will refund reader
Colin Moore once he contacts
the company with his new
email address, which currently
isn’t on its system. As we reported in Issue
628, Colin was annoyed that AVG had
charged him £74.99 for an automatically
renewed subscription despite not having
used the antivirus software since 2016.
The payment was processed by Digital
River on behalf of of AVG, and the money
was taken through Colin’s PayPal account.This prompted Colin to ask whether the
latter was responsible for providing a refund.
The card that Colin linked to his PayPal
account for that original subscription had
expired, but the payment still went through
because he had added a new card.
However, the fault lies with AVG, not
PayPal. For some reason, AVG’s systems
triggered an automatic renewal, and PayPal
had no reason to reject it as unauthorised
because the new card he had linked to his
account was still valid.In such circumstances, neither PayPal nor
Digital River can or are obliged to refund you.
Instead it has to come from the retailer. The
inclusion of Digital River on bank statements
and invoices often confuses people, but it’s
merely a platform for processing payments,
and doesn’t sell you anything.
By refunding Colin, AVG is admitting its
mistake in taking money from him. It’s
different to Paul Archer’s case (above right),
in which he was entitled to a refund because
he hadn’t used (ie, downloaded) the software.Should I get
refund if a device’s
app doesn’t work?
Q
Last December I bought
ThePhotoStick Omni (https://
getthephotostickomni.io),
paying by PayPal. The device offers 128GB
of storage on a USB stick, but the required
app doesn’t work. Omni has ignored all
my emails and I’m £200 out of pocket.
What can I do?
Garry AlliganA
Garry has now got a refund from
PayPal, having made a claim that
the stick was “significantly not
as described” (see PayPal’s definition of
this at http://www.snipca.com/41861). If a device
needs an app to work, and the app is faulty,
then the device is also considered faulty.
We had tried to contact the company
that makes ThePhotoStick. This isn’t
Omni, which is part of the product’s
name, but a Colorado-based firm called
Prairie IT (www.prairieit.com). We didn’t
hear anything back, so PayPal was
Garry’s only route to a refund.
Garry was within the 180-day limit to
make a claim with PayPal. If it finds in
your favour, you’re entitled to a full refund
including postage. If you have to return
items, PayPal will cover costs up to £
(www.snipca.com/41862).Q
On 10 April I spent
£14.53 on a Dell 3D
mouse that normally
costs around £34.99. I received
three emails confirming my
order, and then one cancelling
it three days later with no
explanation. Perhaps the
mouse was mispriced, but if
so why did it take Dell so long
to cancel the order? What are
my rights?
Tony GurneyA
Tony probably doesn’t have any
rights, but we understand why
he might think otherwise. We
suspect that by ‘3D mouse’ Tony means a
mouse that works with 3D-imaging
software. Dell sells several such items
made by German company 3Dconnexion
(see http://www.snipca.com/41853, pictured),
but the cheapest is £102, nearly three
times the price Tony said the mouse
normally costs, and over seven times the
price he actually paid.
These price differences make us
wonder whether, as Tony suggests, DellCan Dell cancel my
order after email
confirmation?
published the wrong
price for the mouse, and
cancelled his order when
it realised its mistake.
There’s no hard and fast
rule in these situations. It’s
commonly thought that a
retailer must sell an item
at the advertised price, but
that’s not the case.
Generally, the bigger the
price disparity, the less likely a retailer
will be to honour the purchase – or be
forced to by courts. For example, in 1999
Argos refused to deliver Sony Nicam TVs
that had been mistakenly advertised for
£2.99 instead of £299 (as the BBC reported
at the time: http://www.snipca.com/41855).
Another grey area is the specific point
at which a contract has been made
between customer and retailer. Sending a
confirmation email doesn’t necessarily
mean the retailer has agreed under law to
sell at that price. Instead, ‘consideration’
must have taken place, which is usually
the seller taking your money for the goods.
With so much unknown, we’ve asked
Dell for clarification.