Meta don’t, for instance. They sell their quest headsets throughout Europe, but offer no warranty or support in many European countries in which they sell them, which is illegal under the EU CRD.
I foolishly bought one, knowing the risk - and it stopped working after a week, and that’s the end of the story - they refused to do a return or exchange, said I could ship it at my own expense, which I tried, only for them to “lose” the inbound package. They received it from the courier, mislaid it - my problem. They then kindly offered to ship a replacement controller at my expense (€150), but only to a different country, not to where I live. They then “lost” that too, forcing me to do a chargeback to get my money back, as despite having no proof of delivery to me, they insisted it had been.
As to “take them to court” - they know damned well that it’s not worth it to spend €10,000+ on legal fees over a €500 piece of electronics, which is why they knowingly and willingly act illegally.
The EU needs a simple, pan-European way to deal with bad actors, or it’s just meaningless legislation that provides no protection to consumers.
> offer no warranty or support in many European countries in which they sell them
Do you mean that you can buy it from the manufacturer website and have it shipped directly to a country where it's not released officially? Or are you taking about third party retailers selling grey market units?
I’m talking about buying from a reputable third party retailer (Amazon) who reasonably passed the buck for RMA support to meta - and ultimately, if you sell your product in an EU country, or allow the sale of your product in an EU country via a retailer, you are liable to provide support for that product.
Only for the purchase of the replacement controller that they lost in transit, as I had proof that that was delivered to the wrong address in the wrong country - the original purchase, no, as my bank said I could just return it to them for a refund, and I had to exhaust that first - but because they wouldn’t accept a return, I couldn’t be seen to have exhausted that option by the bank. It’s kafkaesque.
It does, but there’s a get-out - meta just say that they don’t operate in Portugal, even though they do sell to Portugal, and therefore there’s nobody to claim against. I’d have to go to a higher court, and again, the calculus here is that it’s not worth the consumer’s time - I don’t want to spend years and thousands of euro fighting over it - so the quest just went in the trash, and I’ll never buy anything from them again.
Meta don’t, for instance. They sell their quest headsets throughout Europe, but offer no warranty or support in many European countries in which they sell them, which is illegal under the EU CRD.
I foolishly bought one, knowing the risk - and it stopped working after a week, and that’s the end of the story - they refused to do a return or exchange, said I could ship it at my own expense, which I tried, only for them to “lose” the inbound package. They received it from the courier, mislaid it - my problem. They then kindly offered to ship a replacement controller at my expense (€150), but only to a different country, not to where I live. They then “lost” that too, forcing me to do a chargeback to get my money back, as despite having no proof of delivery to me, they insisted it had been.
As to “take them to court” - they know damned well that it’s not worth it to spend €10,000+ on legal fees over a €500 piece of electronics, which is why they knowingly and willingly act illegally.
The EU needs a simple, pan-European way to deal with bad actors, or it’s just meaningless legislation that provides no protection to consumers.