Evening everyone I'm having a bit of a to-do with a car parts company that appears to have little concept of the SOGA and DSRs. After looking at the various parts and panels they list on their website, I rang them to order up 2 body panels for my car. I asked for 2 particular panels at £75 per panel, and they said postage would be £15, so £165 all in. When they arrived I found they had sent the wrong panels- ones which, according to their website, cost £70 each. I rang them up to say they had sent the wrong ones, and they then tried to blame me, saying I had ordered the cheaper panels, so I would have to pay to have the wrong ones collected and the right ones sent back out- they duly helped themselves to a further £30 off my card for the privilege. The courier came the next morning and dropped off the right panels and took the wrong ones away. I then thought about checking the receipt they sent, and noticed it really did say £150 plus £15 delivery...so I hadn't made a mistake then! Except that when I emailed them to say this, they said no, you definitely ordered the cheaper panels and it was a concidence that a mistake had been made and I should actually have been charged £140 not £150 for the panels! I then decided to see how the panels would fit and found that they were actually badly made and would not fit (not without me having to weld on extra metal due to them being badly made and trimmed too small). So now I have the right parts, but they are in fact unfit for purpose. I then emailed the company back (so within 7 days of receiving the goods) to say they were not fit for purpose, that I wanted a full refund and that the parts would be available for collection from Monday (start of this week). In their reply to my cancellation email the company owner said that as I had ordered the wrong parts to start with I must pay for the return postage on these faulty parts, and that when they do get the parts back I will have a 'handling fee' taken off the refund too! It gets better- they have no T&Cs whatsoever on their website and the only sale documentation I received was the receipt from the pdq machine stapled onto a company headed piece of paper with a brief hand-written description of the order. Having given them instructions about refunding me and collecting the parts, how long do I have to keep hold of these parts for collection? They are in the garage, so out of the way, but I would really want to get shot of them and never deal with this company again! Should I also wait the full 30 days to see if they suddenly realise that SOGA and the DSRs do apply to them and they refund me the full £165, and the extra £30 they took...or am I in for yet more disappointment?!? Thanks for any replies.

It took me 3 letters to get NatWest to do a chargeback on an item I bought someone for Christmas, so it can take quite a bit of effort on your part to get your bank to do a chargeback. They eventually did it, but I only know that because the money just appeared in my account- NatWest didn't bother writing to tell me that they were doing this. If you persist, I'm sure you'll get the right result for you.

I recently hired a van for a weekend and 2 things have now come up that I am not happy about. I took out the extra insurance to get the excess down to £250- no option to get it to zero unfortunately. Unluckily for me, a stone hit the windscreen and it cracked- watching the crack grow made the journey back home fun. They have said I will have to pay the £250 excess, which will really hurt my wallet. Then I got to thinking that wouldn't they have got cover under their own insurance for the van? On my car insurance policy there is only a £40 or so excess for a replacement windscreen. I was thinking that the hire company might have van insurance with a similar smaller windscreen excess and are pocketing a chunk of my money. The other point- mainly triggered by me reading through all the small print after the windscreen problem- was that when i called them initially they said that their vans have a 150mile per day limit and you then get charged 5p per mile over that. Fine I thought, that is only about another £35ish. However, on the day when i signed the hire agreement it actually says that any miles over 150miles a day will be charged at 0p per mile?! They have now taken off the cost for the extra miles, and because I am wanting to reduce the hit to my wallet I am wondering if it is worth asking for the money back for the extra miles, seeing as how 0p per mile is on the agreement that i signed. Is it worth me pursuing the hire company about these matters or is it more one to put down to experience? Any words of wisdom gratefully received! Thanks