Shop won't refund or exchange faulty toaster!

Some of us buy raffle tickets solely as a way to help whoever is selling them. Most of us have no expectations of a prize, sometimes we win things we have no use for. We just shrug our shoulders and move on.

I don't know anyone who would behave the way OP - and you - because a prize was faulty and I'm so thankful I don't know people like this in real life.

Hmmm...thank goodness the raffle prize wasn't a new car that broke down in 6 weeks. How many MNters would just suck that up?

So this business is getting of rid of defective electrical items by donating them as charity prizes and posters think this is perfectly acceptable???

Fuck sake!

@AcorgicalledTiffanyYou could try reporting him to Trading Standards for donating defective electrical goods.

I also think you should post about this dodgy practice online via social media. The business owner is clearly a chancer who has donated old stock in return for free advertising. Shady business owners like that deserve to lose their business!

It wasn't broken though was it. It worked and 6 weeks later developed a fault.

How much would a competition prize have to be worth before you wouldn't find it embarrassing to challenge the supplier if the prize failed to materialise?

It's not the fact that it's an old model per se, but rather that it is broken. The offered prize was a new toaster (which any reasonable person would obviously expect to work as normal) and the received prize was a broken toaster!

Although most people wouldn't blame the school or want them to be out of pocket, there are actually strict laws surrounding the licensing and organising of raffles. Failing to supply the prizes as advertised in pursuit of financial gain - even for a good cause - can get you into serious trouble.

I find this post very cringy. I would leave it. I find this post embarrassing. Please don't show yourself up.

Whew, what kind of business can sustain itself by keeping stock in for that long?! At the very least, you'd expect them to cut their losses and free up stock space by reducing the prices - preferably whilst they were still current (but still replacing them if they do turn out to be faulty).

I'm wondering if he'd had one of those customers we read about on MN retail threads - the kind who stamp their feet and make a scene, insisting on receiving a replacement for a very old item that has eventually broken after many years of good service (and which they may not even have bought from that particular shop!) - and he saw this as a way of getting rid of the duff returned one; maybe hoping that the winner would be like the majority of people on this thread who think it pathetic to expect a prize to function as promised and/or not link it back to his business.

It was bad luck for you the toaster developed a fault but you can’t expect the donator or manufacturer to repair or replace it for you. It was a gift donated to the school to help raise their funds so irrelevant that it’s an old model. If you want a latest model, buy it from a shop. 😂 or you could complain to the school who may refund your ticket cost.

The gamble is meant to be in whether you win a prize or not for your money; not whether any prize that you do win will be fit for the described purpose!

He'd had it in for five years, though?!

And if he had given it in good faith, he would be mindful that he'd promised a toaster to the winner, apologise and replace it with a new one that did work.

To be honest, even if he doesn't have personal integrity in something like this, you'd think that from a purely business perspective he'd be keen not to undo all the good publicity by risking losing all future custom from OP and all friends and family she might mention it to.

In the present day, small local electrical shops will almost certainly have a much smaller range and much less competitive prices than the big online retailers. The massive reason why people choose to buy from them is because of their knowledge of the product and the fact that, if something goes wrong, they will resolve it for you with minimal fuss. If they're going to fob people off when something does go wrong anyway, there's no incentive whatsoever to bother using them.

We have a long-established family electrical firm in our town and I specifically made a point of using them to buy something that I could have got cheaper online, because I thought it was a good thing to support small businesses and also it was new technology, and I wanted to be sure of having a straightforward solution if anything went wrong. It did go wrong and they just didn't want to know. This was several years ago, and ever since, every time we want electrical items, we now just ignore them and go straight to Amazon.

You took a gamble and you lost. Get over it.

The shop has no legal obligation to replace the toaster of refund you. Approach the school as they gave you a dodgy prize and ask for your raffle money back. But probably best just to drop it.

It was old stock. That doesn't mean it was faulty or he knew it was faulty. It means it didn't sell and had been sitting in the back of the shop for a while.

I wouldn't demand that the school make good on the prize, as it wasn't their fault; but I would let them know and warn them not to accept any donations or requests for advertising from that business in future.

In a sense, OP was 'lucky' that the fault only prevented the toaster from working as it should; but what if, instead, it had caught fire - as ancient, faulty electrical goods frequently do? What if it had been a local bakery donating a beautiful-looking cake, but which had actually been made using very old ingredients and which left the 'lucky' winner violently ill?

Throw it out, buy a cheap one from a supermarket if you really want a new one, I feel my face flush just reading you went for a refund

I'd hardly call him a 'poor guy' - dishonestly gaining publicity for his business by passing off faulty old stock as though it were a desirable prize that he was donating.

If, instead of asking sponsors for raffle prizes in exchange for publicity, the school had sold/given out a programme of the event and charged local businesses a price for their advert in it - and the shop owner had paid them for his advert with what he knew to be counterfeit banknotes... I wonder if people would be saying "leave the poor guy alone" then?!

Instead of supporting the school as a good cause, he's actually potentially harmed their profile. I'm guessing the toaster wasn't the top prize; but imagine if the business donating the proudly-advertised first prize (which had encouraged a lot more sales) had actually supplied something worthless instead. It's not really a good look if you have the PTA asking people at every opportunity to buy tickets on the strength of one particularly highly-enticing prize and, unknown to them, it turns out that they're actually promoting a scam.

He should have just politely declined their request when they asked if he would give them a prize - but then he would also have foregone the good PR for his business, of course.

In this instance it’s the school you should seek recourse from as they are the ones who awarded the prize

bit you know that would be a total arsehole thing to do right

Sounds like you went into the shop with an attitude.

You should have tried to butter him up! Poor man is only trying to make a crust!

(Gets coat….)

Frankly, you sound like a loon.

Bahahaha, this is the silliest thing I've ever seen on mumsnet 🤣

That poor guy, leave him alone 🤣

I think you should consider suing the school and contacting your MP!

Or just get a grip, jees! This can't be real 😳

Not at all - read what I wrote: I said supply, not sell.

Obviously most of the goods they supply will be via normal sales to customers, but if they proudly put their name to goods that they supply, knowing (or having a very good idea) that they will be faulty, it's hardly going to be positive for their business, is it?