Why can’t Lifestyle & Mobility retailer present compassion after my loss? | Consumer affairs

I purchased a £435 wheelchair for my disabled daughter from my native Lifestyle & Mobility retailer.

She had been admitted to hospital for checks and I deliberate to make use of the chair to take her on outings when she was discharged.

The subsequent day, her situation deteriorated and she or he died two days later. She was 46.

The wheelchair had by no means left the boot of my automotive and, because the retailer and the automotive park had been in an indoor purchasing centre, had by no means been taken outdoors.

I begged Lifestyle & Mobility to permit me to return it, even for a partial refund, but it surely has refused.

My daughter was a single dad or mum and the cash would make a distinction to her teenage daughter; furthermore, the wheelchair is one other reminder of our loss and it hurts to take a look at it.

JS, Bournemouth

I’m very sorry to listen to of your loss. You have tried for the previous three months to promote the wheelchair privately on-line however to no avail.

You purchased it in individual since you attempt to help native shops.

If you had purchased it on-line, you may have saved as much as £100 and benefited from a statutory 14-day cooling-off interval.

Lifestyle & Mobility has no authorized obligation to refund you, however I hoped, given the grievous circumstances, that compassion would prevail. It didn’t.

It instructed me that prospects are solely refunded if a product is defective or mis-sold. “Given the nature of our business, we are regrettably familiar with circumstances of the sort this customer is experiencing,” it says. “Be assured that we take no pleasure in having to apply the above criteria in such cases.”

Its phrases and circumstances counsel otherwise. These state that any goodwill variations to the refund coverage are on the discretion of the corporate.

I requested it twice why it won’t use its discretion in your case, which, given your daughter died so younger, and so abruptly, earlier than the chair was unpacked, strikes me as distinctive. It didn’t reply.

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