Can I return it?

Can you help me? I bought a fluffy mat and I paid P1100.

I had bought another one at P1200 before this one and a fluffy blanket, so I negotiated to P1100, but it’s not the same as the one I bought first. It’s of low quality and now they can’t take it and refund me. I don’t know their offices because they claim to be mobile. They don’t take my calls. It’s been 3 months since I bought the mat. I Whatsapp and call them every day. I have run out of options because they don’t even take my office calls since they established it’s me calling them. So, I have been calling them to get it so that they can refund me but they’re not taking my calls after they agreed to collect it.

I used to be dismissive of many businesses that didn’t have offices and that are ‘mobile’ but that’s changed completely in the last few years.

In fact I’m now really supportive of start-up businesses that operate from home or have distributed workforces. That obviously works for technology businesses but it’s increasingly how call centers and the service industry operate. And then came Covid and that forced almost everyone to think carefully about how they run their business. Yes, we still need checkout workers in supermarkets but even that’s changing now that so many of them offer deliveries. So, in 2021, we can expect to see more and more companies being ‘mobile’.

But that doesn’t change their obligation, as a supplier of goods, to do so as required by the Consumer Protection Act. Section 15 (1) of the Act says that a consumer “has the right to receive goods which are of good quality, in good working order and free of defects”. You have the good luck to have previously bought the same item from this supplier so you know how good the products can be and can spot when the later goods aren’t as good.

I contacted the supplier and told them that you’d been in touch. Let’s see if they want to talk now?