Debts for spares purchased

How to repair in your community
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I wonder if anyone has experience on Debts for spares purchased .

We recently purchased tv spares value £55 and had them approved in writing by the tv owner… unfortunately it didn’t resolve the issue and the tv is now end of life due to a screen crack. The owners now say they’ve abandoned the tv and refuse to pay despite also signing our terms & conditions.

Anyone experienced this difficulty and ideas on a fair resolution or how to avoid conflicts in future ??

Thanks

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The owner always buys the part and brings it to be fitted.

B`ut not sure how to resolve your current situation.

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Hi Steve,
The second part of your question

is easy to answer: don’t do it.

I have no experience of a situation like this because I’ve never done it and I never would, unless it happened to be someone who I knew personally and trusted, or the part(s) were very cheap.

Can I ask:

  1. Why you didn’t give the owner a list of parts and tell them to make the purchase?
  2. Does your organisation do this regularly?
    If so, did you not consider the possibility that something like this might happen?
    (e.g. someone not turning up to the next event etc. etc.)

Also another question: how did the screen get cracked? If it was caused by volunteers then it’s a bit tricky and you may have to swallow the cost (maybe the volunteer who cracked it can contribute), but if it was caused by the owners, then there is only one “fair resolution”: they pay up.

Assuming that the above is all OK then, personally, I would suggest pursuing the money as a matter of principle as much as anything else, since this person is ripping off a voluntary repair organisation, no matter how they may feel.

This could get a bit complicated though:

  • Are you a properly constituted organisation?
  • Who actually paid for the parts: was it an individual or the repair organisation?
  • Who was the agreement with and was it written in such a way that it would be legally binding if tested in court?

You need to ask yourselves how much effort you want to put in and whether you want to antagonise this person. Also, could they plead poverty and refuse to pay on those grounds?

if you don’t mind antagonising them then you can:

  1. Ask nicely for the money, pointing out that they are stealing from their community.
  2. Demand the money, telling them that you will institute legal proceedings if they don’t pay.
  3. Tell them that if they don’t pay up you’re going to court and that it will cost them a lot more.
  4. Go to court.

If at some point they say “I don’t know why you’re making such a big fuss over such a small amount of money”, then you reply “Well, if it’s such a small amount of money, why do you mind paying it?”

I would suggest not involving solicitors because then you’re in for a whole other world of pain and possibly expense if the case goes against you or if they pay up in the meantime and you’re left with the solicitor’s bill.

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I agree wholeheartedly with Ian and Dave.

The key issue in this case as I see it is that the necessary spares, as diagnosed by the volunteer repairer, did not fix the original fault.

This is always going to be a problem on occasions, and affects professional businesses as well as volunteer repair organisations. It has happened to me too, but only once - and I bore the cost personally, but it was nearer £20 than £55 so I considered it a lesson learned at my own expense.

Even if, as is strongly recommended, the customer buys the necessary spare parts and brings them back to be fitted, if the parts don’t cure the fault then the customer is still likely to be disgruntled, and with some justification, as the repairer has basically misdiagnosed the fault.

The approach we now take at our Repair Cafe is that unless we are 100% sure, after discussion amongst the whole team, that the cause of the fault has been conclusively identified, then we won’t recommend the purchase of spare parts.

In our case, I can only recall one TV set being brought in over the past eight years. TV sets in particular are complex and difficult to diagnose, especially in a time-limited Repair Cafe environment. However TV repair businesses still exist in most areas, so we would tend to refer customers with TV problems to one of those businesses.

It reminds me of the apocryphal story of a TV service engineer who replaced a single resistor and restored a TV set to working order, and charged £50. When the owner queried the bill, the TV engineer wrote on it “Replacing component - £1. Knowing which component to replace - £49.”

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I don’t think that’s the case:

(my emphasis).

i.e. the implication is that it subsequently got the crack, which is why I asked who caused it, since they don’t usually spontaneously crack on their own.

I agree that one should be very careful about recommending the purchase of replacement parts, especially when they’re expensive. This also depends very much on the particular person(s) involved: do they want to get involved in a more elaborate repair process? They may prefer to give up.

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I simply based my assumption on the OP’s original statement: “We recently purchased tv spares value £55 and had them approved in writing by the tv owner… unfortunately it didn’t resolve the issue…”

The breakage of the screen appeared to have happened subsequent to the unsuccessful repair attempt.

Apologies if my understanding of the situation isn’t correct.

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Assuming you’re not going to write this off as a lesson learnt (which hopefully it is- fixer groups don’t order and pay for specific parts) you can go to small claims court and sue on the breach of contract entered into when they signed the Ts and Cs. This of course assumes that the contract is enforceable but you will find that out in court. They may sell say that they considered payment conditional on a successful repair and you will have to be able to rebut that.

1 Like
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Thanks very much for your support comments

We’ll discuss our best options as yes our terms & conditions we’re signed

We worst of it all is the loss in trust we’ve placed in most of our visitors & perhaps we must demand they pay for everything before repairs making a very long winded repair process.
And this particular person has even declared he’ll not collect the old tv either expecting us to be his waste disposal service too.

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Can you recoup some of the loss by selling it for parts?

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Like I said before: what most repair organisations do is tell them to buy their own parts, thus avoiding this problem altogether.

Ahh! He left the TV with the repair café?
Something else I’d never do. The usual arrangement is that they go away with the item and bring it back with the parts next time to finish the repair.

Does your insurance cover items left at the repair café if something happens to them?