Re: PC World and testing electronic items in-store before buying

On 6 May, 18:47, "Richard Bird" <xrichardbi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
"John" <learning.the.la...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:0160ed8e-7382-4dc1-820b-49ddc1a3fcde@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



Today, I visited PC World's High Street Kensington store with my
elderly mum. She isn't very tech savvy and wanted to replace a memory
card on her Sony digital camera with a bigger one. The digital camera
uses an unusually shaped memory card which the store assistant
couldn't find on the shelf.

After checking with a technician, the sales assistant told us that a
physically smaller memory card put into an adapter of the right size
would fit into the camera's memory slot in lieu of the ones that came
from Sony. They sold both in a single package.

Obviously, I wanted to try the adapter and card configuration before
purchasing it for two reasons: the much larger capacity cards (1-4GB)
were a substantial upgrade from the 128MB ones the camera originally
came with and the camera might not be able to fully utilise the space,
if recognise the larger or non-Sony cards at all. Secondly, we were
unsure if the adapter + new card would fit and be recognised in place
of the original memory card that came as a single piece.

The sales assistant refused to let us test out the new card with the
digital camera, instead insisting that we should buy it, open it and
test it entirely at our own risk. She basically said (in a more polite
manner) if it was not suited to our purpose after we bought and tested
it then it was our problem. I asked to see the store manager about it,
but the sales assistant who went off to call him said he was busy and
unable to see us, but supports her position.

What is the legal position here?

Thanks.

Tell them to stuff it

I did exactly that. I told them I'd rather shop in a store where I can
be sure what I buy would be fit for purpose. However I would like to
know the legal position on this and whether they are in their rights
to disallow customers from testing their wares before buying it.
.

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