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Buying an expensive piece of equipment carries an unspoken assumption that if it turns out to be faulty, the law will step in to put things right. On paper, consumer law in the United Kingdom looks straightforward. In reality, anyone trying to get their money back from a reluctant retailer quickly discovers a wide gap between having a legal right and actually getting a refund into their bank account.
Whether or not you agree our Fat Disclaimer applies
As the recent Court of Appeal case [Black Horse Limited v Andrew Curtis (Bristol CC, 21 February 2024] involving car finance demonstrated, companies may rely on internal administrative hurdles to keep a consumer’s money trapped.
Most shoppers run into one of three standard roadblocks depending on when the fault appears.
Did I say that this article is only for lawyers or legal people? I did NOT!
If an item breaks five weeks after delivery, customer service departments routinely deliver the thirty-day brush-off. [Despite the short-term right to reject]. The buyer asks for their money back and is told that the thirty-day window for a refund has closed, leaving repair or replacement as the only options on the table.
If the fault develops at month seven, the buyer will be stopped by the six-month wall. The company replies that the item is out of its initial period, or points to a restrictive manufacturer warranty, claiming nothing can be done unless the customer can prove the defect existed on the day of delivery. See: six-month fault presumption rule
The third roadblock is the most frustrating because it traps the buyer who has played entirely by the rules. Take the example of a high-end computer bought for £2,995.00. More than six months after purchase, it develops a serious hardware fault. Rather than fighting over the six-month rule, the retailer agrees to take a look, saying to send the machine back and they will sort it out at no cost. The buyer accepts that the retailer is entitled to try to fix it. The computer goes back to the workshop, major components are replaced, and it is returned to the customer.
Except it is not sorted. The machine fails again in the exact same way.
At this stage, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 is unequivocal. A trader gets one chance at a repair. See: final right to reject goods (specifically subsection 24(5)(a)). If that repair fails to make the goods conform to the contract, the consumer is entitled to exercise the final right to reject the goods and get a refund. Standard consumer advice websites stop the story right there, as if the buyer simply sends an email citing the Act and the retailer politely hands back the £2,995.00.
What those guides rarely explain is what happens when the retailer refuses to play its part in ending the contract. Even when sent timestamped video evidence showing the repaired £2,995.00 computer failing on the desk, the retailer refuses to agree that a refund is owed. Instead, the company demands that the customer parcel up the machine and send it back into the company’s own workshops for another round of testing before it will even state whether it accepts the claim.
By withholding its formal agreement to refund, the retailer turns a clear statutory right into a tactical stand-off. See: statutory 14-day refund deadline (specifically subsection 20(15)). The customer is asked to surrender the only physical evidence of the failed repair to an opposing party that has kept its legal position completely reserved, all while the retailer continues to hold the £2,995.00. Understanding how companies use their own internal processes to block the unwinding of a contract—and how the courts view that tactic—is essential for anyone caught in the same trap.
1. How the CRA 2015 structures the right to a refund
When the right to reject crystallises after a failed repair
Once a retailer has attempted a repair and the item still does not work properly, the legal relationship between the buyer and the seller changes fundamentally. Under Section 24(5) Consumer Rights Act, a consumer who has required or agreed to a repair may exercise the final right to reject without giving the trader any further opportunity to fix or replace the goods if the goods still do not conform to the contract after one repair.
Notice how the statute frames this trigger. The law does not say the right to reject arises only when the retailer’s workshop issues a certificate admitting that its first repair failed. It is an objective question of fact. If a £2,995.00 computer comes back from a repair and continues to malfunction, the statutory condition is met. The consumer is entitled to bring the contract to an end.
How a contract is brought to an end
Exercising the right to reject does not require a court order or the permission of the retailer. Under Section 20(5) Consumer Rights Act, the right is exercised simply by the consumer indicating to the trader, by words or action, that they are rejecting the goods and treating the contract as at an end.
As soon as that clear indication reaches the retailer, the contract is terminated. At that point, the law moves from the question of whether the goods are faulty to the mechanics of unwinding the transaction.
Unwinding the contract: the twin duties under section 20(7)
Parliament designed the unwinding process to be simple and immediate. Under Section 20(7) Consumer Rights Act, from the exact moment the right to reject is exercised, two reciprocal duties arise side by side:
- The trader has a statutory duty to give the consumer a refund.
- The consumer has a statutory duty to make the goods available for collection by the trader (or to return them only if there was a prior agreement to do so).
What matters most for a buyer facing a difficult retailer is what is missing from Section 20(7). The statute does not create a halfway house where the consumer must post the rejected goods back into the retailer’s custody for a second round of bench-testing while the retailer keeps its options open. Nor does it make the trader’s duty to refund conditional upon the consumer first surrendering physical possession of the item.
Instead, the law treats the transaction as finished. The buyer holds the rejected goods ready for collection, and the retailer owes the buyer their money back. Yet despite the simplicity of Section 20(7), retailers regularly bring this entire statutory process to a standstill by exploiting a single word buried eight subsections further down in the Act.
2. The section 20(15) loophole: when ‘agreement’ becomes a corporate lever
The 14-day clock and the word ‘agrees’
If the duty to refund arises the moment the consumer rejects the faulty goods under Section 20(7), when does the money actually have to be paid? The answer sits in Section 20(15) Consumer Rights Act, which states that a refund must be given without undue delay, and in any event within 14 days beginning with the day on which the trader agrees that the consumer is entitled to a refund.
On a plain reading, Parliament included that 14-day rule to stop traders dragging their feet over processing payments once a rejection is made. In the hands of a defensive corporate legal department or customer service team, however, that single word—agrees—gets turned inside out.
Instead of reading Section 20(15) as a strict payment deadline, the retailer reads it as an escape hatch. The logic runs like this: if the 14-day clock only starts ticking on the day the trader agrees that the buyer is entitled to a refund, then so long as the trader refuses to utter the words “we agree”, the 14-day deadline never begins.
Conflating the existence of a legal right with the trader’s willingness to admit it
By treating its own agreement as the master switch for the entire refund process, a retailer can freeze a consumer’s statutory rights indefinitely. This works by blurring two completely different things: the objective existence of the legal right to a refund under Section 24(5) Consumer Rights Act, and the trader’s subjective willingness to admit that the right has arisen.
When pressed directly on whether a statutory right to reject depends on the retailer’s own workshop confirming a fault, a legally advised trader will be careful not to say yes. To claim in writing that an Act of Parliament only takes effect when a company’s technicians say so would look absurd before a judge. Instead, the company splits hairs. It concedes in theory that its inspection does not create the statutory right to reject, while insisting in practice that it will not agree a refund is due—and will keep its legal position completely reserved—until the consumer hands the goods back for the company to test on its own terms.
A concession that is immediately cancelled out by a condition is no concession at all. Whether a company says “there is no right to a refund until we inspect the goods” or “we refuse to agree that a refund is owed until we inspect the goods”, the practical result for the buyer is identical. The statutory duty to refund under Section 20(7) is paralysed.
By withholding its formal agreement under Section 20(15), the retailer manufactures a deadlocked “dispute” and uses that deadlock as leverage. The consumer is left with a choice between issuing County Court proceedings or capitulating to a corporate return process that the Consumer Rights Act 2015 simply does not require.
3. The £2,995.00 computer: the pre-refund inspection trap
Ignoring objective proof of a failed repair
To see how this lever operates in the real world, return to the example of the £2,995.00 computer. After more than six months of use, the machine develops a serious hardware fault. The retailer takes it back, replaces major internal components, and returns it to the buyer. Within days, the machine fails again in the exact same way.
Today, proving that a computer has failed does not require shipping a heavy box across the country. A buyer can record high-definition, timestamped video showing the machine failing to boot or crashing under basic operation, and send those files straight to the retailer.
Often, the retailer’s initial customer support response gives the game away. A technician sees the report or the footage and immediately offers to bring the machine back to the workshop for a priority repair. That offer is an unspoken admission that the first repair did not hold. Nobody offers a priority repair on a computer they believe is working properly.
Yet the moment the buyer declines a second repair and exercises the final right to reject for a £2,995.00 refund, the tone changes. The video recordings are suddenly brushed aside. The company does not claim the videos are faked, nor does it point to any technical ambiguity in the footage. It simply announces that its internal processes do not allow it to confirm a failed repair from video evidence, and demands the physical return of the machine before it will take a position on the claim.
Surrendering the primary evidence while the retailer ‘reserves its position’
On the surface, a retailer asking to look at a faulty computer sounds reasonable enough. In the context of a legal dispute over a £2,995.00 asset, however, handing the machine back without a prior agreement to refund is a major trap.
The defective computer is not just a piece of retail stock; it is the primary physical evidence proving that the first repair failed. So long as the machine sits preserved in the buyer’s home, the buyer holds both the asset and the proof of the legal claim.
If the buyer surrenders the computer to a retailer that explicitly refuses to agree a refund is due—and that states in writing that its legal position remains completely reserved—the balance of power flips overnight. The retailer now holds the buyer’s £2,995.00 in cash and has exclusive, unsupervised custody of the £2,995.00 machine.
Why an internal workshop return is not an independent legal inspection
Once a disputed machine is back on the retailer’s own workbench, the buyer has zero oversight over what happens next. A technician can update firmware, re-seat a loose cable, swap out a faulty part, or wipe diagnostic logs, and then declare that no fault could be found—or quietly finish the repair that failed the first time and insist on sending the machine back.
In civil litigation, inspecting disputed physical evidence is governed by strict safeguards to protect both sides, often involving agreed testing protocols or an independent expert appointed jointly under the Civil Procedure Rules Part 35. A standard commercial return to a seller’s own repair department offers none of those protections.
Demanding that a consumer hand over the central piece of evidence into the unsupervised custody of the opposing party, while that party refuses to commit to a refund under Section 20(15) Consumer Rights Act, turns the statutory scheme upside down. The buyer is expected to take all the evidential risk just to get the retailer to state its legal position.
4. Lessons from Black Horse Limited v Andrew Curtis
Refusing to collect the goods until the consumer accepts the company’s terms
While the details of everyday retail disputes differ from large-scale hire-purchase agreements, the underlying corporate playbook remains remarkably consistent. The mechanics of how companies use internal procedures to stall consumer rights were exposed in sharp relief by the Court of Appeal judgment in Black Horse Limited v Andrew Curtis [2024] EWCA Civ 49.
In that case, a consumer purchased a defective Range Rover [page 2, para #1]. The finance company admitted in writing that the vehicle was not of satisfactory quality when it was sold, and it knew the consumer had lawfully rejected it [page 5, para #18-19]. Yet, following its usual corporate process, the company refused to collect the car from the consumer’s driveway unless and until the consumer agreed to settle his claims on the company’s own financial terms [page 2, para #1, page 5, para #29].
When the finance company’s witness was cross-examined at trial, the true purpose of that policy was laid bare [page 5, para #29]. Asked why the company claimed the consumer was refusing to return the vehicle, the witness gave a remarkably candid answer: “because he wasn’t accepting our offer” [page 5, para #29].
The company was using physical possession of the car—and the threat of mounting usage charges—as a commercial lever [page 7, para #23]. By linking the collection of the rejected asset directly to the acceptance of an inadequate financial settlement, the finance company attempted to force the consumer’s hand [page 5, para #29].
Why internal company policies cannot override Parliament’s intent
When the dispute reached HHJ Ralton on appeal, the court looked past the technical arguments over statutory wording and focused on the real-world consequence of the finance company’s position [page 4, para #13, page 12, para #37].
The judge ruled that allowing a trader to avoid its statutory obligations simply by refusing to agree on collection terms would make a complete mockery of the protections Parliament intended to give consumers [page 12, para #37]. As the judgment highlighted, such an interpretation leaves a consumer who has lawfully rejected an item—and who has been deprived of the refund needed to buy a replacement—open to financial penalties purely because the trader has deliberately chosen not to collect the goods [page 12, para #37].
The core lesson from Black Horse v Andrew Curtis applies equally to a £2,995.00 computer, a kitchen appliance, or a motor vehicle. A company cannot invent an internal rule or an extra-statutory “inspection” hurdle that overrides the structure of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 [page 5, para #29, page 12, para #37]. Once the statutory right to reject has been triggered, the trader’s duty to unwind the contract is mandatory, not a matter of commercial negotiation [page 11, para #28-33].
5. Practical steps when a retailer withholds agreement to refund
Preserving independent evidence of the post-repair failure
When a retailer responds to a rejected item by digging in its heels and demanding a physical return before it will even consider the claim, the buyer’s priority must be watertight evidence preservation. A commercial dispute of this nature is won or lost on contemporaneous records, not arguments over the phone.
Before any movement of goods is discussed, every piece of evidence showing that the first repair has failed must be securely locked down. This includes high-definition video recordings featuring independent time and date verification, error logs, diagnostic outputs, and copies of all written communications. If a retailer chooses to ignore clear visual evidence of a malfunction, that silence becomes part of the record [page 15, para #12]. Keeping a structured chronology of every email and letter ensures that if the matter eventually reaches the County Court, the timeline speaks for itself [page 17, para #A].
Separating availability for collection from unconditional surrender
As established by the statutory framework, a consumer exercising the final right to reject is under a duty to make the goods available for collection, not to act as a courier delivering items back on the trader’s exploratory terms [page 11, para #29].
Maintaining a firm, clear boundary is essential here. The buyer’s position should be explicitly stated in writing: the item is fully preserved and available for collection, but that collection must be for the purpose of processing the statutory refund under Section 20(15) Consumer Rights Act, following acknowledgment that the right to reject has been triggered. Refusing to hand over primary evidence into the unsupervised custody of a trader who explicitly reserves its position on whether a refund is due is not “withholding goods” or acting unreasonably—it is a logical defense against losing the sole proof of the failed repair [page 16, para #18-19].
Misuse of the Civil Procedure Rules as a pre-action threat
Corporate legal teams frequently attempt to flip the pressure back onto the consumer by waving around the Civil Procedure Rules and threatening applications for a stay or wasted costs if items are not immediately shipped back for testing [page 19].
It is vital to recognise what pre-action protocols can and cannot do. The overriding objective and the pre-action practice directions govern the procedural conduct of parties seeking to avoid unnecessary litigation, but they do not create brand-new substantive preconditions that override an Act of Parliament [page 16, para #15]. A pre-action letter threatening costs cannot force a consumer to abandon statutory protections or surrender physical evidence into an unmonitored workshop pipeline while the trader keeps its legal position entirely open [page 16, para #18-19]. When a retailer stonewalls an objective statutory right behind a wall of procedural threats, recognising the tactic for what it is allows the consumer to hold their ground with confidence.
Conclusion
When an expensive purchase breaks down outside the initial thirty-day window and a repair fails to cure the fault, the law gives the buyer a clear path forward. Yet the distance between a statutory right in an Act of Parliament and money safely back in a bank account can feel immense when a company decides to stand guard.
Whether dealing with a motor vehicle finance house or a technical retailer defending a high-end machine, the playbook remains identical. Companies rely on internal processes, artificial inspection hurdles, and the ambiguity of the word “agrees” to stall the unwinding of a contract. By refusing to acknowledge that a refund is due until the consumer surrenders physical possession of the goods on the company’s own exploratory terms, they turn a simple statutory remedy into a war of attrition.
Recognising this lever changes the entire dynamic. The issue is rarely whether the goods are faulty or whether the single-repair rule has been met; the real battleground is whether a trader can use its own refusal to cooperate as a commercial weapon. By keeping records watertight, separating the legal duty to make goods available for collection from the trap of unconditional surrender, and refusing to let procedural threats override clear statutory protections, buyers can strip away the corporate camouflage and hold their ground.
