Replacing A Defective Item

Who pays installation?

[ispy]

A customer of ours ordered an item from us that turned out to be defective after it was installed. Installation was not included with the purchase.

We agreed to ship them another item but they feel that we need to pay to have the new one installed since the first one was defective.

Any thoughts on who should pay to install the replacement item?

It's a pretty involved/pricey install and we don't want to be on the hook later if anything goes wrong with the installation process since we would have to hire a service which could leave us liable.

[dpd1]

Who ultimately made the item? I would say it comes down to them... But even so, good luck. Probably take a lawsuit to make it happen, unless they feel generous.

[piatkow]

No idea but it sounds like the sort of thing that is decided by case law which will depend on the jurisdiction.

[ispy]

On a side note, should the customer want to return the defective item without a replacement we normally consider this a standard return. That is, with the customer paying shipping and restocking fees.

The reasoning being that if they don't want a replacement they are returning because they did not want it, rather then because of a defect.

But now, we are considering changing the return/defective policy to let people do a free return on a defective item, that way we break almost even because we save on shipping x 2. We don't have to ship out the new item or pay the return shipping on the defective one.

The only catch is that it could cause an irate customer to damage an item for a free return and call it a defect.

Maybe this could be an unwritten clause whereby we could implement it on a case by case basis without adding it to the written return policy, so nobody would know beforehand.