The district consumer disputes redressal commission 1 has directed Dell India; Infiniti Retail Limited, which owns the Croma brand; and the Croma store in Sector 22-C to refund ₹57,747 to a resident of Sector 7 for selling him a defective laptop in 2018.
The commission also directed that ₹ 8,000 be paid for causing mental agony and harassment and ₹7,000 as cost of litigation to the complainant Ankur Khajuria.
As per the judgment pronounced by the commission, Khajuria had purchased the laptop from the Croma store on July 9, 2018. However, the online warranty document, which gets activated only once the laptop is switched on, showed that it was valid from June 4 , 2018. Hence, Khajuria had alleged the Croma store had already opened the laptop before selling it to him.
Khajuria had stated in his complaint to the commission that despite having the latest configurations, the laptop was slow and used to hang often. On August 24, 2018, he complained to the company and they tried to fix it by taking remote access and upgrading the operating system. But, it didn’t work.
Khajuria said the keyboard also developed problems and the company changed it on March 22, 2019. However, the same issue persisted and no one came to fix the problem, which Khajuria said amounted to deficiency in service.
In their reply, Dell said that the complainant had reported an issue for the first time via email on July 27, 2018, with regard to system performance, and they had given him instructions on resolving it. They also gave him an option to visit the service center, but the complainant did not turn up. Dell said its support staff tried to follow up with the complainant, but did not get any response.
The complainant reported the same issue on October 8, 2018, and the Dell support team told him to reinstall the operating system and the complainant did not respond again. Dell said it had resolved all of the complainant’s issues, adding that there was no deficiency in service or unfair trade practice on its part and prayed for dismissal of the complaint.
The owner of the Croma store and the brand Croma contested that they cannot be in any manner held responsible for the defects, since manufacturing and related defects that may occur are the direct responsibility of the manufacturer.
The commission observed that the email communication between Dell and Khajuria showed the dysfunctional condition of the laptop. It also observed that it has been proven that the laptop had been opened at the Croma Store before being sold to Khajuria.
The motherboard of the laptop was also changed by Dell and the hard disk was formatted, which led to Khajuria losing vital data, it observed.
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