tl;dr – Company sold a defective product. Says they’ll refund the cost of the item, but I still have to pay shipping both ways. Frustrated. What to do in this situation?
I recently needed to purchase a replacement battery for a laptop. I was unable to find it directly from the manufacturer and the only other place I could find the correct part number was from notebookparts.com. I was pretty hesitant to purchase from them after reading some very mixed reviews about the company, but with no other options presenting themselves I decided to bite the bullet and hope for the best.
It arrived on time and is branded with the OEM manufacturer logo and everything. But it will not hold a charge. I let the laptop charge it to 100% and then powered down the laptop completely. When I came back to it about 36 hours later, it was dead… 0% charge left. I turned the laptop back on and let it charge back to 100% then unplugged the power cord and got less than half the battery on time than the old oem battery.
I emailed the company, explained the issue and requested a return/refund. Their one sentence response was:
Please return the battery to the following address for replacement: ~~~
I replied and told them that I am not interested in a replacement, that I would prefer to return the item and be refunded. Their one sentence response:
Please return the product to the following address: ~~~
After several more rounds of emails where I ask them to explain their return process so I know what to expect, it feels like they are being intentionally vague. They are not providing a return shipping label and only when I asked point blank did they confirm that they would only refund the price of the battery, not the original shipping cost.
So they sold a defective item and are trying to stick me with the shipping costs both ways for me to get a refund. I’m also concerned they’ll try to charge a restocking fee, or claim it’s not actually defective, or come up with some other excuse to deny the refund once I ship it back. They say they will have to confirm that the serial number I returned is the same that they sent me, which is totally reasonable, except that none of the order confirmation emails or anything has the serial number listed anywhere so I have no way to prove what they sent if they claim it doesn’t match.
So I guess I’m wondering if I have any recourse when it comes to the shipping costs. Am I stuck paying those? Should I start the return process as they have instructed? Should I just ask for a chargeback from my credit card co? If I get a chargeback and they don’t provide a return shipping label, can they somehow claim a debt that gets sent to collection or something dumb like that?
Just trying to figure out the best way to navigate this situation. Thanks.