[deleted]
I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action
11–20 of 381 posts
Re: I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action
#12I'm no lawyer, but at least in the US I was under the impression that once something has been mailed to you, it's yours. A company cannot send you something then require payment or for you to return it.
My understanding in the UK is that if someone sends you unsolicited goods and then tries to bill you, it's yours to keep.
But this doesn't apply to things sent to you by mistake, which certainly seems to be the case here. You are expected to return the good to the sender at their expense. Although you are expected to facilitate returning it, I doubt any court would look favourably on a company taking you to court for failing to jump through their hoops.
Re: I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action
#13How embarrassing (for Nintendo). As soon as someone threatens legal you just have to tell them you'll only be engaging via lawyers and you'll be seeking to recover your legal expenses from them once the situation is resolved.
A pity that multinational companies can usually afford much better lawyers than the average Joe. It's really not the same as threatening your neighbor with a "We'll see each other in court", for a parking lot dispute.
>A pity that multinational companies can usually afford much better lawyers than the average Joe.
It's a $400 device, that is the extent of the damage; how much do you think they are willing to spend on their legal?
Re: I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action
#14How embarrassing (for Nintendo). As soon as someone threatens legal you just have to tell them you'll only be engaging via lawyers and you'll be seeking to recover your legal expenses from them once the situation is resolved.
A pity that multinational companies can usually afford much better lawyers than the average Joe. It's really not the same as threatening your neighbor with a "We'll see each other in court", for a parking lot dispute.
Yea but a case like this doesn't need high-powered lawyers. Usually a high-street solicitor will write a letter outlining what's happened, objecting to the legal threat and asking for information on how to return the merchandise. All in all, it should cost ~£60.
Re: I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action
#15One, as far as we know, isolated logistics problem with some ill-trained phone operators not solving it gracefully is the claim. What am I missing that makes this story more interesting than that? Is it just because Nintendo? Or is it exactly this interesting if it were the same story but the product plumbing supplies?
Re: I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action
#16I didn't even know you could order from Nintendo directly in the UK, I think they'd be wise to shut this down entirely and work through their retail partners. Just imagine how little resources Nintendo puts into the retail aspect of their operations in the UK. Clearly they can't even train people to do customer service properly without threatening legal action. I understand the sentiment to want to support Nintendo but I am not entirely surprised this happened, it takes hard work to run a well functioning shop/store online or otherwise.
Re: I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action
#17I have never, ever dealt with any above mid-sized company that handles customer service and delivery well. There seems to be a set of standardised industry practices that are completely and utterly customer hostile.
The moment regular company employees stop dealing with customer issues, delivery, etc., and hands it over to "specialists", it's basically a crap shoot whether you can get any issue resolved at all, because the systems they put in place make it nearly impossible.
For example: A courier claims they called at your house and got no answer, even though you were in and they didn't. You call customer services, but they have no way at all to contact the courier and tell them to go back and try again. Even if they're only two minutes down the road. The system deliberately puts a firewall between the reps and the delivery infrastructure, because any kind of ad-hoc action to resolve customer issues interferes with the logistics planning for the day's deliveries.
All the rep can do is rearrange delivery for the subsequent day, whereupon the problem often repeats itself, but this time with a different courier, and a different rep. I had this process repeat several times, over a period of weeks, until simply cancelled an order completely (one worth hundreds of pounds to the vendor).
I do wonder if higher level managers realise that delivery departments are optimising purely to make things easy for themselves, and what that's potentially worth in terms of wasted effort, lost orders and customer hostility. I guess they probably don't care, because it still saves them money on aggregate.
Re: I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action
#18How embarrassing (for Nintendo). As soon as someone threatens legal you just have to tell them you'll only be engaging via lawyers and you'll be seeking to recover your legal expenses from them once the situation is resolved.
A pity that multinational companies can usually afford much better lawyers than the average Joe. It's really not the same as threatening your neighbor with a "We'll see each other in court", for a parking lot dispute.
This itself is an interesting question. The foundations of the justice system talk about testing everyone equal in the eyes of law but somehow equal access to legal resources is never talked about. I think we need to think over this as a society. There are some countries like Germany where for people with low income the state pays money to hire a lawyer rather than providing a lawyer.
Re: I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action
#19I didn't even know you could order from Nintendo directly in the UK, I think they'd be wise to shut this down entirely and work through their retail partners. Just imagine how little resources Nintendo puts into the retail aspect of their operations in the UK. Clearly they can't even train people to do customer service properly without threatening legal action. I understand the sentiment to want to support Nintendo b…
Having looked into it further it looks like at least part of their operation is being managed by The Hut Group - from some contact info - and I found this surprisingly similar link from four years ago.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25330615
Hard to say really to what extent there is overlap here.
Honestly I'm now starting to wonder if I should pull the article - getting it read is good, but this is more attention than I expected and I'm getting a little nervous of what'll happen next now. :-S
Re: I bought a Switch from Nintendo and they threatened me with legal action
#20I'm no lawyer, but at least in the US I was under the impression that once something has been mailed to you, it's yours. A company cannot send you something then require payment or for you to return it.
Looks like you're right. >Q. Am I obligated to return or pay for merchandise I never ordered? >A. No. If you receive merchandise that you didn’t order, you have a legal right to keep it as a free gift. https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0181-unordered-merchan...
I don't think the FTC cover the UK.