Topic: Cancelled order shipped 10 days after being confirmed cancelled by Nintendo, they refuse a refund or return

Hello,

I am having a bad customer experience with the Nintendo UK official store. I made an order for a SNES Classic controller on the 1st of October 2019 and five minutes after making it sent an email that I wish to cancel it. I didn't get reply so I called their phone support and on the 5th of October they confirmed that the order is cancelled with the following email:

This is Rodrigo from Nintendo UK Customer Support Team.

I'm writing you this e-mail in order to inform that the Order of your SNES controller was cancelled.
Have a great day!

If you have any further questions please don't hesitate to contact us again.

Kind regards,

Rodrigo
Your Nintendo UK Customer Support

Despite this confirmation of the cancellation they shipped the order and charged me on the 15th of October. I have been in discussions with them ever since. With their support being super slow and didn't suggest any resolutions. I gave them my address and phone number and asked that they send a courier to pick it up. No action on their part.

Today they wrote me that this cancellation confirmation means nothing and that they will not be providing a refund.
Here is their email today:

Further to your recent enquiry, I have now received further information form our dedicated team. Regrettably they advise that cancellation requests are not a normal part of our procedure and, while we will attempt to accommodate where possible, this is not guaranteed.

In your case the agent who confirmed the cancellation did not hold all the necessary information and ultimately the order could not be cancelled. On the basis of this we are unable to arrange for the item to be returned and refunded.

I'm sorry not to have a more constructive answer for you today. If I can be of any further assistance, please let me know.

Kind regards,

Andrew

Is this legal? I think when they confirm a cancellation is like they annul the sales contract. Can you advise me how to seek my consumer rights? I called Nintendo UK multiple times and they won't do anything.

Some additional details. I live in Bulgaria. I use a mail-forwarding service from UK to Bulgaria. It is an UK address where I can shop and they forward to me much cheaper than using a courier. It was not my mistake that the controller was shipped. The controller is currently unopened and the cardboard box it was shipped in is also unopened.

I am open to getting a refund or for them to pick it up by sending DHL courier.

I am a big Nintendo fan and have their systems since the Gameboy Color. I have also traveled to Japan and was impressed by the levels of service and politeness there. I never expected something like this from Nintendo. I have been shopping from UK sites with hundred of packages sent (mostly amazon.co.uk) and never had any issues before.

Thanks.

@Jivko12 You said you've called before to try and resolve the issue. I wonder if your country & mail forwarding might be a hurdle in some way. My thinking being, your being outside of the UK may add a legal hurdle or process that makes this difficult for them to resolve. That's just a guess.

At this point, if I called Nintendo, I'd just nicely ask as the Nintendo rep if you could speak with their manager. When I call customer support in the US, they log your call and note what we talked about. So when you call, there should be a record on file to bolster your story. Maybe the manager is best person to resolve your issue, if you hadn't tried that.

While they did screw up, and you shouldn't have to go out to ship the controller back, I wouldn't ask or demand to have someone pick it up until after they agree to give you a refund or something you can accept Unfortunately, if they are going to refund you & cover shipping cost, I think you may end up having to ship it, because having someone come pick it up might not be permitted, or be too far out of the norm for Nintendo UK, or Nintendo in general.

So far I have been super polite and patient with them. Their support was pretty bad, because this issue is from October. They have been answering my emails by saying that they are working on the issue but no one has called me or offered any type of resolution for me.

The situation with the mail forwarding is that shipping from Bulgaria to the UK is about 22 EUR. I have no problem to send it if they refund me the shipping cost. For example, I had two situations with faulty headphones from amazon UK and they refunded me the shipping cost to honor their warranty. So far Nintendo has offered nothing of this sort. If Nintendo UK had asked me to send it back I would.

I see this situation as much more serious than a warranty situation. It was shipment and charge of a confirmed cancel order which for me voids the sale contract. This happened 10 days after the cancellation confirmation and it is clearly due to logistics and operational problems within the company. That is why I requested they schedule a pickup with courier. It is not illegal to use mail forwarding service and I don't see how this can influence a situation where a mistake has been made by them.

Does anyone have experience with the UK consumer protection agency? I found that their site is: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/

Citizens Advice are a charity who provide accurate information about consumer affairs in the UK. They are not a protection agency and they can't act on your behalf but they ARE an excellent source of information which you can be confident is correct.

I know it's not much help to you now, but something you could have done is not picked the item up so it was returned to the sender and you received a refund this way. It's never a good idea to accept delivery of unsolicited packages.

Also pertinent, in the UK we have a thing called Distance Selling Regulations, which mean if you bought an item at a distance (eg via the Interwebs), upon receipt, you have 14 days to change your mind for any reason and return the item for a refund. For you, this would be 14 days from when your parcel was dropped off to the UK based mail forwarding depot rather than when you physically received it.

The thing is, as far as the sale goes, Nintendo sold and shipped an item within the UK. They didn't send it to Bulgaria - you employed a third party to send it to you which is very much not Nintendo's problem.

Although they should not have dispatched the item in the first place because you cancelled the order, it's not really Nintendo's problem that you are in Bulgaria (and I suspect their willingness to observe the warranty on your headphones may have something to do with observing EU rules on the matter. So, good luck with that after the end of the year).

I can't tell you what the legal position is, but I can see why Nintendo think they shouldn't have to pay for the return of the item from Bulgaria.

But have a chat with Citizen's Advice and see what they say.

My main argument is that the sales contract was void when they confirmed the cancellation. As such, Nintendo fraudulently charged my credit card in situation where we don't have contract for me to buy. Perhaps I will contact Citizen's Advice as it seems this forum thinks Nintendo is right. I am pretty sure legally they are wrong and the fact that I am in Bulgaria has no relevance. With my service I cannot stop or return packages by not picking them up as you suggest.

Also, I was in contact with them requesting a cancellation five minutes after making the order. Emailing them immediately and speaking with customer support and they confirming the cancellation. You think this is normal customer service?

This is why you don't buy something and turn around 5 minutes later and change your mind. Would you buy a new game and run right back to the counter and say i changed my mind i don't want it? Besides it's an extra controller. How much money did you actually lose on it? Not like it's a huge deal if you don't get back the little bit of money you paid for it. You never know when an extra controller could come in handy. I would keep it and make some use out of it.

@Zeldafan79
The reason I cancelled, the order is because I ordered the same controller from Nintendo.de afterwards, as I noticed it had lower shipping costs. I never had problem cancelling an order in my life before. I cancelled many orders from Amazon without any problems. I am using my snes classic controller from Nintondo.de. The one from Nintendo.uk is staying unopened in the shipping box.

@Jivko12 https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/consumer-c...

According to which, this law has superceded the distance selling regulations which I didn't know. Looks like it offers similar protections. Not sure if it applies if you are in a different country but like you say, you had it delivered to a UK address. I personally wouldn't stand for it but seeing as I live in the UK it is probably easier for me to sort out.

The UK Nintendo official store is run by The Hut Group who also run the website Zavvi with who I had the exact same problem with. I did actually get a prepaid return label from them but they refused to refund for a long time and I ended up going through PayPal to get my money back.

I am a bit confused though because the Nintendo UK store only sells NES classic controllers at £7.99 I believe. (These are for the Nes Classic mini). I'm not sure you if you are talking about these (which are probably not worth the hassle of getting a refund for due to the low price) or the wireless SNES controllers which are available from the My Nintendo store.

The My Nintendo store is a bit different. While the same rules should apply if you are a UK resident as they have an online UK storefront, the controllers actually ship from Germany and I was under the impression that they calculate postage based on your location. For example it's actually quite expensive to have these shipped to the UK and I'd assume the storefront is different for each country so the local laws would apply.

Either way, I would assume it would cost you 22 euros to send it back to the mail forwarding company anyway as whichever Nintendo store you ordered from would only be obliged to refund postage to and possibly from the address they sent it to.

So in total you'd be paying this mail forwarding company 44 euros to send this item back and forth. With the controller only costing £7.99 to £26.99 to begin with depending on which one it is, sometimes you have to ask yourself if the money you'd get back equals the amount of work you have to put in to get it back.

That being said, if you were a UK consumer and they told you that, they would be totally wrong. If it was me, who lives here, I wouldn't stand for it.

That's all the information I have, sorry I can't be of more help!

I'd probably send them a friendly but official e mail along the lines of...

"Hi there,

Can you please forward this message on to your supervisor.

Dear Sir/Madame,

Under the consumer contracts regulations I have lawfully cancelled the order #(insert order number) for the (insert item name) within 14 days of placing the order.

My cancellation of the contract was received and accepted by yourselves prior to the dispatch of the item.

I request a full refund of the item and postage costs under these regulations.

Due to me not being at fault for the item's dispatch, I also request that you provide a shipping label, refund for costs or other alternative so that this item can be returned to you.

Kind regards,

(Insert your name)"

Like I say though, you would have to get the item back to the address that they shipped it to so you have to decide if it is worth the cost to you to do that. Good luck if you decide to pursue it!

(You may want to change consumer contracts regulations to distance selling regulations. I am not sure which one is currently in place to be honest but Which is generally a good source of information)

@Jivko12
Sounds like a case of as they say going off half cocked. You already clicked on confirm purchase then found a better deal afterward. I've never dealt with this kinda thing myself because i always make sure before i click if that's the purchase i definitely wanna make.

The controller costs 27 GBP and it is the wireless SNES controller. Both controllers were bought from Nintendo. One from the German site the other from the UK site.

As @ralphdibny said these controllers are shipped out from Nintendo Germany no matter where you buy them from. So even if you order from the UK site you get it from Germany. This is why the shipping is more expensive to the UK. As my service offers me address in Germany I ordered again and told them to cancel the UK bound order.

When I ordered it the controller was not even available so my order was a pre-order.

I don't care so much about the money but the fact that I am big fan of Nintendo and expected more of them. Also dealing with their UK/Europe support has been really disappointing as the level of service has been really low. I believe that I am right in principle and that the sales contract was void after they confirmed the cancellation.

@Jivko12 just a heads up, these controllers go for way more than their face value on eBay. You may be able to recoup your costs in that way.

You won't get the satisfaction of Nintendo being consumer friendly in your specific instance but somehow I doubt you could expect that of any company. Most large corporations adhere to the law if they have to and some go above and beyond to fix issues because they want your custom, not out of the goodness of their hearts. It might sound pessimistic but unfortunately it is true.

@ralphdibny

Yeah I just saw that they go for 55 GBP on ebay.uk. So I can sell it without problem. For me the issue is not so much about the money, but that I am big Nintendo fan and I expected that they don't act like the typical large corporation. Also, when I traveled to Japan people were very nice and the level of service was very high so I expected that Nintendo and their European representatives would have different values. Nintendo is very unique gaming company, which doesn't rush games and do massive layoffs. I read multiple stories how they went above and beyond fixing old systems or doing special favors for their customers. I guess these things happen only in Japan and perhaps the US where they haven't outsourced to some suspicious outfit like this Hut group you mention.

@Jivko12 it might seem obvious but different people work at companies and there are lots of different people who work there. So somebody's contact with a company might be with an employee who loves their job, loves the product so they may go above and beyond on their own steam. Somebody else may go above and beyond based on their job requirements. Someone may be scared to make a decision without authorization and palm you off. And somebody else might be a miserly jobsworth.

It's true in all industries, both public and private, the police, stores, the government (civil servants). Everyone is just a person so unless you are talking to a scripted Amazon call centre, you may find you get a different experience depending on which representative of the organisation you are in contact with.

Cultural differences are also a factor. I understand Japan to be quite different from the west and even this thread has proved that US attitudes are different from UK attitudes and that is possibly due to the laws in place in our respective countries.

Generally I like to expect the least from everybody so I can be pleasantly surprised rather than expecting the most from people so I can come away bitterly disappointed.

@Jivko12

I don't think Nintendo are right to refuse to accept a return of the controller because they should never have dispatched it in the first place.

I think they have grounds to refuse to pay for the postage from Bulgaria. Your sales contract was to have it sent to a UK address which they did.

But I do agree with you it's one of those goodwill gestures I'd expect a big company to make.