Great suggestions except with it being xmas the local library is closed until January 5th, there is no internet cafe in the area and I'm not spending my christmas visits to family and friends asking to use their PCs to sort this. This was my whole point, I'm not refusing to deal with it just want to leave it for a few days and get my busy festivities out of the way. Surely that's not too much to ask?

On 11th December I purchased an item through Buy It Now on Ebay, I'm not sure if it was from a business seller but they sell a lot of the same/similar item and are running a shop on there rather than a personal seller. I paid straight away through Paypal, however as I used my phone Paypal held the funds while I completed some extra security questions which were done the next day. When I completed the questions and the funds were released I sent a message to the seller apologising for the slight delay. The seller sent the item and I received it with no problems. Roll on to the 21st December, I got a brief message from the seller saying simply "can you send the item back or I can collect it" I asked the seller why they wanted it back and they said I had told Ebay there was a fraudulent purchase on my account and they had refunded my money. I had not made any contact with Ebay, Paypal or the seller before this so knew nothing about it and had received no emails. After looking into it the payment was reversed on the 18th December. The seller is still insisting that I must have done it. I opened an investigation with Paypal as I did not request the refund. Paypal's investigation found that they had sent the seller five emails over a seven day period asking them to accept the funds that had been held for security reasons and when they failed to respond Paypal automatically reversed the payment. The seller is still denying this and is demanding that I pay again right now. I only have internet/ebay/paypal access on my phone so it is very difficult doing anything like this on there. I tried to pay again but the link on Ebay Mobile refuses to let me pay as the first payment was refunded. This leaves me stuck, I have tried to pay but can't and I have the seller demanding the item back or immediate payment even though it was only refunded down to a mistake they made. I did have full intentions of paying again in full but the seller is now messaging me so often it is bordering on harassment. I asked them to give me until just after Xmas when I will be able to get on a proper PC and deal with it as I am limited with my mobile, as far as I'm concerned I made the payment, they messed up they should wait for me to deal with it when I can. I am now so sick of dealing with the seller I'm at the stage of telling them to go sing for their money, they messed up, I offered a solution for next week they are not happy to wait. What rights do each of us have?

Thanks for the above, however I ordered a new machine last night. We've been over two months without one and with the weather getting worse and drying time is limited we cant keep relying on family and friends. I can't get a report from Currys as my brother works there and it would look like a biased report, as for comet, they told me they don't offer it as a service? I have really begrudged paying for a new machine so soon after the last one but hopefully this one will last a lot longer.

Well it look like I've lost this battle. As I said we live in a small town and it's taken us this long to find an engineer to even look at the machine (others in the area don't work on machines this new or wont repair Hoover units). He came today and confirmed that it is the circuit board and that it is such a common fault that he doesn't think it's even worth repairing as every one he's ever fixed has had the same problem again within a year. He said as he didn't think it was worth fixing he wouldn't charge for the visit. I asked for a report and offered to still pay the agreed £35 or even a bit more f he would do it. He said he won't do a report to be used against Hoover as he has had problems with them in the past and doesn't want his name involved in any dealings against them. So basically I'm screwed, I can't get an engineers report and without one don't have a leg to stand on. I can't believe that two engineers diagnosed the problem without even looking at the machine (although this one has physically tested it to confirm his thoughts) and have said it's really common yet Hoovers have every engineer locally scared to say anything against them, or at least to put it in writing and make it official. I'm off to look for a new machine that we can't afford

I bought a new Hoover washing machine in April 2010, I got it directly from Hoover in their staff shop at the factory (it is actually open to the public but still called the staff shop). It was sold as a reconditioned or ex display item as are all of the items in the staff shop which is why there is a massive saving on them. While inside the first year it started playing up, it would sometimes not complete a cycle and others not start at all but all issues resolved themselves by turning off the machine and turning it back on and it happened at most once a fortnight so we never bothered to do anything about it as we couldn't afford to be without it for any length of time. Three weeks ago it failed to start and is of course now outside the first year although there is a two year parts warranty with it, after speaking to Hoover they want us to pay £100 for an engineer to come out and if it's deemed covered under the parts warranty they will fix it at no extra cost. After asking around it appears that it is a short in the circuit board and effectively the start button has "blown". We have been told unofficially that this is a common problem but Hoovers always deem it to be physical damage by being too rough and heavy-handed with the button. We could easily replace the part ourselves and can get it online for around £65 but I can help feeling that Hoover should be repairing it free of charge, we have not been rough with it at all and as there are only two of us it is only used at most five times a week usually just two or three. Surely a washing machine should be designed to be heavy duty enough to be used daily for at least three years. If we had been heavy handed surely the other buttons would be having the same problems however they are all fine despite being used as often as the start button. Am in right in thinking that if I get an independent report done I can claim all costs back from Hoover and have them fix it free of charge if it is deemed as manufacturer fault? This then leads to my next problem, we live in a small town and there is nobody local to do the report we would have to take it 10-20 miles to find someone. Any help and advice with this would be hugely appreciated as we have been without the machine for 3 weeks now and are relying on family and friends to help with washing

Can I just ask what testing has been done to say it's a faulty hard drive? From what I've seen the Dell Mini 10 range tend to use solid state hard drives which almost never fail so to have two to fail in the same netbook would suggest there is more to this. Solid state drives are so reliable they rarely break even if dropped, thrown, hit etc. the rest of the computer would break before the drive. I'm not backing up what you were told at your local Currys store but if you haven't had a qualified technician to diagnose the exact fault then they may well be within their rights to have it tested and possibly offer repair, it may be a completely different fault to last time. I am in no way shape or form linked to this company but I do carry out independent reports to send to away to them as well as many other computer retailers and in my experience nine times out of ten I find that the fault is not caused by a manufacture defect but rather negligence on the consumers part. I also find that the times it is caused by manufacture defect the company does get it resolved albeit not always particularly quickly but it does get sorted.