Kayser_Soze wrote:Verkkokauppa has two stores I believe which sell stuff normally and then they also sell stuff over the internet which I understand by this thread forces them to take a refund.
By law, they’re only forced to do that for the stuff you bought online. However, they are also
voluntarily offering the same benefit for the customers who buy from their actual brick-and-mortar stores.
Kayser_Soze wrote:So what about Anttila, they have stores but you can also order via NetAnttila. Does that mean that they are forced to take a refund since they are an internet store.
Nope; only if you buy the product from their Internet store. They
could do business the same way as Verkkokauppa, of course – if they wanted to. But if they don’t, that’s in their right. (I’m not aware of what kind of return policy they actually
do have for the products bought from their ordinary stores and can’t be bothered to check it out right now. But if they don’t publish any specifics on their company website, or anywhere else, your safest bet is not to make any assumptions.)
Kayser_Soze wrote:Finally I see that Veikon Kone also sells many of their TV in the internet as they are not all in display at the store, but apparently they do not take a refund.
Do they take orders via their website? Or is it just a promotional product catalog? (As far as I can tell, they don’t, and it is, so they’re not a “distance seller”.)
Kayser_Soze wrote:So I guess it is a crap shoot and one should always ask whether they will take the stuff back or not or is it a matter of whether the item is bought from the internet instead of the store?
Both hold true. If you’re buying from an actual store, but unsure about the purchase, you should always ask about the return policy of that particular store in advance, before closing the deal. Or try to make them accept it as an
avokauppa, “sale on approval”, as Hank mused – in which case you would probably get some sort of special receipt about it or they would mark it down in their database in some special way, or write an extra note about it for themselves stored somewhere near the cash register – and you would probably also negotiate some time limit after which it will be considered a “done deal” unless you have returned the product to the store. (My own mother does these “sale on approval” deals all the time when buying clothes.)
If, on the other hand, you buy from the Internet, the distance sale laws apply and you get your 14 days automatically.
Kayser_Soze wrote:If so then the thing to do is to go to the store try the stuff out, play with it then order the same item from the same company via their internet site and presto... you have a guarantee 14 day return policy and the stuff is delivered to your home address.
Something is not right
If it’s the same company selling the same stuff both ways, but with different return policies, it’s of course in your right to do it that way, if you insist. You’ll pay some extra for the delivery, though.
(People are known to do shadier things... such as sampling instruments and getting good advice in a local music store, then ordering the actual product from thomann.de or someplace else. Not too nice, but something that cannot really be regulated in any practical way.)