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I dont like bad mouthing companies and til i recieved a rather slimey email from them I was about to just draw a line under it.

I bought a mat from a company called deep cut designs. They had just gone into production on the mousemat material the likes of Gamemat.eu use and frontline gaming. The design looked wicked. I ordered straight away and they delivered very quickly. Happy days. Well til I opened the box and the mat was a joke. Looked nothing like what I had ordered (ill post pictures up)

I asked for a refund and they said they would refund me cost of the mat, not the postage of it to me or the cost to return it. See thats where it got my back up. As I view it they were expecting me to waste £20 in postage just to get nothing at all. We had some back and forth on the matter and i had to esculate the matter with pay pal. They ruled that they had to give me a full refund once i return the mat. But paypal doesnt cover the cost of the return postage. So Im £10 down. Its nothing money wise, but the principle of the matter is that due to their incompetence Im having to lose money.

Then someone on their page asked what their mats were like etc. So I posted what they advertised and what I got. They blocked me, removed my comment, and then sent me the following email

Hi, Lee,

After escalating your case to PayPal you got the same answer that you got from us. Maybe our offer was fair after all? I suggest spending your energy elsewhere than on our FB boards. Otherwise we will have to respond with full context of this case, including your emails and other information. Which, by the way, PayPal ruled out as incorrect as well.

So if we are wrong, PayPal is wrong, general practice is wrong, but you are right nevertheless...

Thanks,

Gediminas, DCS

basically as i read it. they are threatening to reveal my information etc

Not exactly the buisness practise of trust worthy folks that.

From what I can see, both you and Deep Cut are in the wrong.

They were absolutely wrong for threatening to reveal your personal information. There is no reason for that.

However, regarding the shipping I think you are definitely in the wrong. Who should pay for the return postage if not you? For large national, or even international business, free return shipping is a courtesy, but I don't think you can expect that level of service from a smaller operation. I agree that paying postage on something you are returning is not fun, but Deep Cut isn't making any money on that return shipping, and they need to receive your mat back so they can deal with their own QC issues related to the return.

Deep Cut offered to refund you the money for the item you were unhappy with. That is all of their obligation to you, the unhappy customer.

Regarding your posting on their FB page, I wonder if the tone or content could be seen as hostile by Deep Cut, especially after your "back and forth" on the shipping matter. That might have informed their response to you (which again, they shouldn't have threatened to share your private information) and escalated things.

It sounds like you and Deep Cut should part ways as quickly as possible.

And those mats look nothing alike. If I had bought a mat thinking I was going to get picture #2, when I actually received what is in picture #1, I'd be upset too.

see for me the issue is that they either looked at the mat and went sod him. or they didnt even bother to make sure their product was correctly printed. So why should I have to pay for their mistake at all. I own my own buisness and if i make any mistakes on a job its out of my pocket as it was my mistake.

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:
However, regarding the shipping I think you are definitely in the wrong. Who should pay for the return postage if not you? For large national, or even international business, free return shipping is a courtesy, but I don't think you can expect that level of service from a smaller operation. I agree that paying postage on something you are returning is not fun, but Deep Cut isn't making any money on that return shipping, and they need to receive your mat back so they can deal with their own QC issues related to the return.

If you are returning a product because it is faulty, then absolutely the seller should cover the return postage. The size of their business is irrelevant. They are still responsible for providing the right product in the right condition.

That's actually the law here in Oz. Obviously, consumer law is going to vary in different countries, though.

 insaniak wrote:
If you are returning a product because it is faulty, then absolutely the seller should cover the return postage. The size of their business is irrelevant. They are still responsible for providing the right product in the right condition.

Is the mat considered faulty? Paypal came to the same resolution as Deep Cut, so whatever protections are in place in the UK* regarding faulty items didn't seem to come into play here.

Perhaps Paypal didn't see this as a faulty item so much as an item not meeting the buyer's expectations.


*I am assuming OP is in the UK based on their flag.

paypal didnt even ask for visual proof and they dont have any control over who pays the return postage after a phonecall to them. Yes I am from the UK

Distance Selling Regulations state that you're liable if you change your mind (don't like the colour, isn't quite what you want etc) but if product is faulty then the onus is on the vendor.

However, I don't think DCS are UK based?

A minor point: their email did not say they would reveal your personal information. They said they would " respond with full context of this case, including your emails and other information." That "other information" does not automatically equal "personal information."

Anyway, maybe it's the picture quality, but is the mat your received really as blue as it looks on my screen?

I don't blame you for returning that mat if it's blue. looks nothing like photo #2

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:
is the mat considered faulty? .

If those pictures are accurate, yes, the product looks nothing like what was advertised. Products being unfit for purpose. or being substantially different to what was advertised are generally lumped in the same basket as damaged or faulty goods. In all of those situations, the buyer has not received what they paid for, and so the seller is obligated to fix it or refund them in full.

 insaniak wrote:

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:
However, regarding the shipping I think you are definitely in the wrong. Who should pay for the return postage if not you? For large national, or even international business, free return shipping is a courtesy, but I don't think you can expect that level of service from a smaller operation. I agree that paying postage on something you are returning is not fun, but Deep Cut isn't making any money on that return shipping, and they need to receive your mat back so they can deal with their own QC issues related to the return.

If you are returning a product because it is faulty, then absolutely the seller should cover the return postage. The size of their business is irrelevant. They are still responsible for providing the right product in the right condition.

That's actually the law here in Oz. Obviously, consumer law is going to vary in different countries, though.

Same here in the EU (99/44/EC IIRC).

Funny side note, black prints from a colour printer (even a good one) usually are at least somewhat bluish, usually (unlike your fancy SOHO colour laser these vinyl printers often don't have a dedicated black cartridge/toner/whatever AFAIK - certainly the cheaper ones a startup might use) so from what I know, it would always look a little blue. A little. Not as much as the photo seems to suggest (although cell phone cameras can be deceptive when it comes to colour representation), and whether the average consumer should even be aware of that at all is questionable - certainly given the product image (just a render from the artwork, perhaps?).

Lots of sellers in the EU get away with not complying with these rules, though - who's going to litigate a €15 postage dispute? Realistically, while you are in the right that's little more than words on paper, currently.

Of course, none of it matters - even if you're in the right you don't threaten to post private communications with a customer like that - ever.
At most, if they'd sincerely disagreed with a position you had publicly taken, they could post their version of the story in reply (although even that rarely ends well for a seller).

Oh and if nothing else, I'll be sure to share a link to this topic around whenever the topic of gaming mats, or deep cut specifically, comes up in conversation. Good grief.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 insaniak wrote:

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:
is the mat considered faulty? .

If those pictures are accurate, yes, the product looks nothing like what was advertised. Products being unfit for purpose. or being substantially different to what was advertised are generally lumped in the same basket as damaged or faulty goods. In all of those situations, the buyer has not received what they paid for, and so the seller is obligated to fix it or refund them in full.

And to back that up with applicable regulations, let's dig out the aforementioned directive:

Consumer goods are presumed to be in conformity with
the contract if they:
(d) show the quality and performance which are normal in
goods of the same type and which the consumer can
reasonably expect, given the nature of the goods and taking
into account any public statements on the specific characteristics
of the goods made about them by the seller, the
producer or his representative, particularly in advertising or
on labelling.

Advertising images certainly qualify as such statements. Reasonable expectations, well, the thing had one job (look like a lava floor) - and it does nothing of the sort. Easy enough.


Really guys, this is not one of those grey areas, this is an open and shut example of a nonconforming product.

unfortunately it is as bluie as the pictures suggest. I was more than a little disappointed in not only their dealing with this matter but also the fact they would send a mat that looks like it does.

If they had offered to replace the mat with one that was as advertised id have been satisfied also. But to palm of subpar products then expect their customers to be out of pocket due to their mistakes just reeks of bad buisness altogether.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The text in quotes is what i sent to them. Thought I would put up what the PM's said for clarity purposes.

hello. recieved my mat today and wondering how i go about returning it as the colour is very different to the pictures in your store. I ordered the lava mat and the ground is very blue and the lava doesnt look as well as in the photos.
Tuesday 13:26
any chance you could reply please
Tuesday 19:34
Hi, sorry for delay. Yes, you can return the gaming mat for a full item refund. return address is:

-redacted-

You might wish to use tracked delivery to ensure that the mat reaches us and we will be able to refund you without any hassle. Cheers!

Gediminas, DCS

does the refund include the cost of the return postage?

As in general practice of refunds - no. We also do not refund the shipping price (9,9 gbp) of the shipment to you. Otherwise we refund full price of every mat that is returned to us.

so im expected to foot the bill to return the mat that isnt as advertised. You have seen the images I sent yes? Its not even close to being the same colour at all.

Sorry to say but Im confused as to why I am expected to pay the return postage when the fault lays with the product
so all in all its going to cost me 20gbp to have no mat at all. dont sound like much of a good deal to me this

Dear, Lee
As I wrote in previous message - if you are not satisfied with the product, we will be glad to refund you for it once you return the item in unused condition. We do not have control of the service or the means you are going to use to deliver the product back to us. When you return a product to a store you a refunded it's price, not the journey you made to the store (which might accidentally go through Hawaii for 3 weeks).
Hope it is understandable now,
Gediminas, DCS

so as i said. because you didnt check the quality (or worse case care that it was sent looking like it is) you expect me to have wasted 20gbp. Through no fault of my own

Ill send a dispute to paypal and recommend our club sticks with getting their mats from GAMEMAT.eu instead from now on.


Sending a faulty product is one thing. Expecting customers to have to be out of pocket due to it isnt on

.

And this is why I avoid companies that are countries away. Particularly ones like this is countries where I have no clue what the laws are for consumer protections, customs, etc.

Plenty of other game mat suppliers out there. Hope this gets sorted for you.

Again, the law is on his side.
Compliance with said law is another matter. Quite frankly, that issue can occur just as easily domestically (this sort of situation quite frankly is endemic around here).

Has anybody else tried and failed to find these guys on Facebook?

In Britain we have that too. It's the old distance selling regulations.
http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/distance-selling-regulations

It's a handy guide, but it does say that you get the postage refunded on a faulty good. It's a breach of law if they don't.

I was planning on buying some of their stuff for Malifaux. Now I won't, thanks for the warning OP.

Isn't Lithuania part of the EU now? OP I would raise again with Paypal. State the product is faulty and cite EU law.

Well, this is interesting

I see that as formal representative of Deep-Cut Studio I don't have any more to add that it is already said. But to sum things up:

- Lee (known as Lutharr101 in these forums) bought a product from us (we use the original name, since it is already available on his posts)
- he was unhappy with it
- he was offered full refund for a product price
- couple of emails later he was offered full refund including shipping costs (not the return costs)
- customer demanded returns costs refunded as well
- case was escalated in PayPal (as we are using PayPal as main means to pay for the good on our webstore) and PayPal ruled out that a full refund will be given to the customer as soon as he provides proof that the item is returned to us. PayPal did not refund the return costs to a customer as well

So... Looks like we kept ourselves to the general practice, rules of the trade and law as well. And PayPal confirmed that with their decision following the customer and seller protection programs. As of today customer is demanding full refund, refund for his return costs but is still has the product for himself.

As for parallel thoughts expressed in emails:
- as other members noticed, we did not threaten to disclose any personal information about anyone. We stated, that we will have to provide full context about the case if Lee continues his abuse. But since it is already available in this thread, I feel no need to repeat it
- Lee however did disclose personal information by posting shipping address here on forum without asking if it was a public address or not. It is not. I would kindly ask to remove that part from the posts
- in his letters Lee called us names - slimey rats and you be the judge if these and other action are a professional manner to solve things (but looks like Lee 'accidentally' forgot to expose that email )

To sum up the sum up:
- (hopefully) this is our first and only post in this thread
- I am glad to see opinion about the case from both perspectives - the good and the bad. We are customer oriented business and this case will surely give us a lot to think about. We will review what we went through and will seek ways to improve it. As we did before when we received various feedback
- we will review and re-check the product again. And if we find it necessary to take some action - we will

Gediminas Jonaitis
Deep-Cut Studio

if you had checked the product to begin with this thread wouldnt exist. Funny how on your facebook you removed the pictures I posted so other customers cant see the reality of your product.

thats my response to the email that made me post this thread deep cut.

screenshot the email. thanks for proving much better than i could what a slimey little rat you are.

Below is taken directly from the consumer rights page.

The Distance Selling Regulations no longer apply in UK law. As of 13 June 2014 the new Consumer Contracts Regulations - which implement the Consumer Rights Directive in UK law - apply to all purchases you make at a distance.

This includes shopping online, by mail order, over the phone or through a TV shopping channel.

What should you get back?

The original cost of the outbound postage to you should always be refunded by the seller.

The seller's terms and conditions or returns policy should state who pays the cost of returning the item.

If they don't state this, then the seller has to cover the cost.

In this case, you're entitled to a refund of the total amount you paid, including costs to ship the item to you, and the fee to return the item. No admin or restocking fees should be charged.

Returning faulty goods

If you receive faulty goods and wish to return them, The Distance Selling Regulations are in addition to your other legal rights.

So, if your goods are faulty and don’t do what they're supposed to, or don’t match the description given, you have the same consumer rights under the Sale of Goods Act as you have when buying face to face.

Any terms and conditions that say you must cover the cost of returning an item wouldn’t apply where the goods being returned are faulty.

 DeepCutStudio wrote:
- Lee (known as Lutharr101 in these forums) bought a product from us (we use the original name, since it is already available on his posts)
- he was unhappy with it

Because it's blue, and clearly not as described.

PayPal ruled out that a full refund will be given to the customer as soon as he provides proof that the item is returned to us. PayPal did not refund the return costs to a customer as well ... So... Looks like we kept ourselves to the general practice, rules of the trade and law as well. And PayPal confirmed that with their decision following the customer and seller protection programs. As of today customer is demanding full refund, refund for his return costs but is still has the product for himself.

Paypal is pretty superficial in how they intervene, and they were never going to refund more than he paid. The fact that Paypal aren't especially interested, hardly makes it a moral victory for you.

If your product is faulty then you should return him his money in full, and if you are insisting on having the mat returned to you as well, then you should agree to pay for the return. It's bad enough that you are wasting his time giving him an errand to run. Why do you need the faulty mat back anyway? Are you planning to palm it off on some other poor customer, in the hope that they'll just cut their losses and keep it, rather than get stung for return shipping? Sounds like a scam.

 DeepCutStudio wrote:
. As of today customer is demanding full refund, refund for his return costs but is still has the product for himself.

And he's well within his rights to expect that full refund, including the return cost, once you receive the item back. Given that the mat is clearly not right, a lot of businesses would just tell him to keep it and give him his refund, avoiding the hassle of having it sent back.

I would strongly recommend that you make future business decisions based on EU trade law and principles of good customer service rather than relying on Paypal to tell you how much to refund your customers.

Ultimately, regardless of what the law says (I have no idea what the refund policy is for the EU - Edit: After a brief google, it looks like the EU laws do stipulate that the seller pays for the return of the faulty item) leaving a customer out of pocket because you sent them a faulty item is just not acceptable business practice. Anywhere.

I'm also a little confused by this:

- Lee however did disclose personal information by posting shipping address here on forum without asking if it was a public address or not. It is not. I would kindly ask to remove that part from the posts

I have removed the address.

However, I'm a little puzzled as to why you would be giving out anything other than a business address to a customer, and why you would expect that customers would think that it was anything other than a business address.

If you're running a business from home and using your home address for shipping, then having that address be available to the world at large is pretty much unavoidable.

Yeah, I'm confused by this one.

The blue mat shown is nothing like the sales image so is a defective product.

I have to say that having dealt with DCS myself and having recieved a mat I wasn't happy with (scratched, probably by customs I think) the outcome here is the polar opposite of my exchange. I found Gediminas to be pleasure to deal with even in that circumstance. I was sent a replacement and Gediminas and I agreed that returning the defective product was an unnecassary expense for both of us. I still use the mats and donated the defective one to a club to use for intros.

If as has been suggested here the OP has been abusive then I can see how DCS wouldn't go beyond the minimum basic provisions.

I would suggest that the best course of action here would be for both parties to be a bit magnanimous and sort this one out. So the OP should apologies for any rudeness and delete any accusations and DCS should look ad sending replacement product out, then belatedly handeshakes all round.

Just a suggestion of course.

An EU business that supplies a faulty product MUST provide a full refund on return including there costs of the return postage

it does not matter if the buyer is offensive/annoying/a nightmare, or if they are the most polite the company has ever dealt with

the company MUST pay the return postage

now they don't have to hand over cash if they don't want to, they could arrange their own courier or supply a return label etc

or request proof of destruction (eg photos of the cut up mat)

or simply let the buyer keep the fault product and supply a refund or replacement

so based purely on that Deep Cut are in the wrong

You are not in the wrong at all, the I tem is faulty or clearly not as described. They should offer a full refund. Whether the item is returned to them or not depends on whether they will cover postage. Simply - the customer cannot be expected to pay return postage on faulty or incorrectly sent items (this looks like an entirely different playmat).

If you're getting hassle from them give trading standards a call and they can set you straight on your rights.

The sensible options are that DCS either give a full refund and tell Lee to keep the faulty mat. Or they post out another.

I agree, at best this is a case of abysmal quiality control that the company somehow missed when sending out and should be sincerely sorry about not having spotted a clearly defective product before it got sent to a client.

At worst this is a case of false advertising or a "bait and switch", the product recieved is nothing like the product advertised, if the company knew that this was the case upon sending out the product to the customer they were clearly aware of sending a poor quality item that was not representative of that which had been ordered.

Either way the negative PR this generates will likely have a wider reaching effect than if the company had simply replaced or refunded the matt to start with, rather than deciding to drag it out and try to convince a paying customer that they werent responsible for whole mess.

Deep Cut mats eh? Judging by the responses here, I'll be advising those I know not to touch with a ten foot barge pole. If you sent me a faulty good, refused to pay return postage, and then deleted my reviews where possible, I'd be more than a little miffed.

thanks for proving much better than i could what a slimey little rat you are.

This message however, won't get you anywhere, and you should cease the insults and fall back on the law.

DeepcutStudio wrote:So... Looks like we kept ourselves to the general practice, rules of the trade and law as well.

There's this little thing called business ethics that goes slightly beyond the law. If you send out a faulty product, the moral onus is generally regarded to be on you to replace it with a functional product or ensure the customer is not out of pocket due to your mistake. Which is why the distance trading laws generally reflect that sort of thing to boot, you can't have companies shipping out broken ovens or suchlike, and then demanding customers pay the £80 return costs.

Well, look's like Deep Cut Studio are loosing future money in their pocket for a small amount of change coming out of it.

Maybe they care, maybe not? - plenty of positive reviews out their for their gear.

The mat, being what appears to be blue and not black as illustrated, is in breach of the Sales of Goods Act 1979 (as amended), UK. EU member states trading to the United Kingdom are bound by this British trading law as it is mirrored by wider EU regulation.

The selling company incur the cost of return shipping (which DC are obliged to pay btw) on the condition that the customer first alerted them within 14 days of receipt of item, under the EU directives on consumer rights online.

However, this is a fait accompli AFTER the item is returned. So if the buyer pays for postage and returns the item, using tracking to evidence the return, the seller is legally obliged under EU trading standards laws, to entirely refund.

It is common practice to simply waive that return process on receipt of photographic evidence and provide a cash refund or negotiate a substantial reduction in price to keep the item. That is between the two parties.

It is also entirely legal to simply refuse to further trade with the individual going forward, as Deep Cut are not the only business providing gaming mats on the market.

Seeing that the mat looks nothing like what they advertised I'd say that company should ABSOLUTLEY pay for shipping.. Or sur them for false marketing.