I ordered a particular dictionary second-hand from a store located in Ppoland. I did this because it's by my favourite foreign-language dictionary publisher, but Polish-English dictionaries by this publisher are not available in Canada or through Amazon. The book was advertised as being like new.
I paid relatively little for this dictionary - the shipping cost more than the book itself, and the total price was less than I earn in an hour. By Canadian standards this is very cheap for a dictionary; I don't know what dictionary prices are like in Poland.
Yesterday, I noticed that there was an error in the binding of this book. Some pages were duplicated in the wrong place, and other pages were missing. I'm missing a total of about 50 pages of information in a 950 page book. Other than the missing pages, the book is in excellent condition. The only sign that it is used is someone's name and student number written in pencil inside the front cover.
If the store is unable to exchange my copy for a properly-bound dictionary, I still want to keep it because I can't get this dictionary anywhere else and the vast majority of the book is quite helpful.
Now for the question: It occurs to me that under normal circumstances and by Canadian standards, a refund of part of the purchase price would be in order. I have no idea what Polish standards would be. However, only about 5% of the book is damaged. A 5%-of-the-purchase-price refund would be literally pocket change, an amount of money a child wouldn't be impressed with, not worth the trouble of processing a credit card refund. A refund of the entire purchase price (not including the shipping costs, which I don't want refunded because they did go through the trouble of shipping it to Canada.
So, your opinions please: if they can't exchange the book for me, should I ask for a partial refund? If so, how much? Or should I just be happy that I got 95% of an excellent dictionary that is not available in Canada for such a reasonable price?
1 comment:
I think you are owed something. You say the book was advertised as being like new. Even though the parts you did receive are in good condition, I would hold that when something is "like new," the expectation is it is very close to new--and I think most people would not be satisfied with paying full price for a new item that is damaged or irregular in some way.
If they can't replace it with a properly-bound copy in a like new or reasonably good condition, I think they owe you at least some of the purchase price. I assume the cost of the book would have been less if it was in poor condition. I think that is what they should charge you, at most, and they should refund the difference. That is the standard I would expect here in the US and I would think, foreign country or not, that they subscribe to some standard of customer service.
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