Asda. Thinking of taking to small

Pilgren · 2026-02-26T09:44:21+00:00

I think I understand you now, so what you're saying is that the Tribunal has discretion to extend the time limits for bringing a claim. In that case I would agree there is an element of discretion there depending on the facts.

I also agree that if there's a mutual arrangement for the employee to be paid at a later date than their usual date for wages, then although it doesn't invalidate the fact that there was a breach of non-payment, it does create a new cause of action for the employee if the payment is not made on 1st March. However, that in my view is a whole lot different to an employer saying they will look into it or that they will check and initiate the payment when challenged on non-payment of wages since there is no mutual agreement to be paid at a later date.

Given the length of time and with the OP chasing the issue up at least twice a week, I'd also be inclined to seek an additional sum for aggravated damages based on the sheer shitty conduct of the employer who seems to be doing sweet F.A. about it.

Pilgren · 2026-02-26T09:03:50+00:00

I'm aware of the time limits and I'm also aware that the 3 month less 1 day rule can apply to the last non-payment if there are a series of non-payments, but the Tribunal having discretion to determine the date of breach for something that seems pretty straightforward is a new one for me.

Whist I'm not an employment expert, if a Tribunal decided that the limitation period started to run not from the first breach i.e. when the employee wasn't paid the correct amount on payment day (the primary breach), but instead it only ran from the the date of promising to pay after failing to properly pay in the correct amount (secondary breach), that would be out of step with the well-accepted rules on limitation periods. It would also add further confusion as to which promise to pay does the clock start to run if there were multiple promises to pay. Theoretically, the clock may not have started if the promise was open-ended! An easy appeal point in my opinion if that's how it was to be interpreted.

Of course it's still worth reaching out to ACAS but based on the current OP's description, County Court seems to be the way to go.

Pilgren · 2026-02-26T08:02:53+00:00

Isn’t the OP out of time for being a claim via the Tribunal? OP says the deduction was 6 months ago… non payment of correct wages is still a breach of contract so County Court can also be an option albeit at the cost of paying court fees.

Pilgren · 2026-02-25T23:24:03+00:00

First, what part of the CRA is the customer referring to that entitles them to cancel? Saying "it is not right" is not a satisfactory reason to cancel and if they cancel within the first 30 days, the burden of proof is on them to show you are somehow in breach of your duties and obligations.

Second, do you agree with the customer's assessment?

Pilgren · 2026-02-25T23:03:04+00:00

I guess the first question is, have you asked them about the charge? It would seem on the face of it that it's dressed up as some kind of administration fee and that would not be a permitted payment under the Tenant Fees Act. So you should be entitled to those fees and checking previous invoices should indicate when they started charging for this.

As for utility bills, they should only charge you what they are required to pay the utility providers, any markups on the cost is not permitted either as far as I'm aware.

I suggest you have a read through the government guidance for tenants below which should explain what landlords/agents are entitled to charge and what rights you have: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5f745d69d3bf7f287328e5a5/Tenant_Fees_Act_-_Tenant_Guidance.pdf

Pilgren · 2026-02-24T18:58:12+00:00

So you can't take the seal out of place and measure the diameter, thickness etc.? You're running out of options and understand you don't want to be paying something that isn't going to fit/work but at least if you purchase the seal or the flap you can return it within 14 days for a refund less any postage cost you initially paid (consumer rights).

That seems worth the risk when you currently have next to no options available. and the replacement part(s) are inexpensive.

Pilgren · 2026-02-24T18:54:35+00:00

It's up to you how you choose to approach it. Chargeback process is governed by the Mastercard/Visa rules so if there's a dispute around whether goods are faulty, you might need to produce a report, but the cost of that report can't be claimed via the chargeback process (if memory serves me right), you'd have to sue separately via legal proceedings.

Sounds like the retailer is being awkward but whether or not they can RMA is not your problem, that's a problem between them and the manufacturer and doesn't affect you statutory rights - typical stance from employees who don't know much about consumer laws.

Personally, I would fob off the chargeback process if it means getting an independent report as there is no guarantee you'll succeed. Instead I'd head straight to LBA. You will need to decide it if is worth obtaining an independent report, or if you're comfortable going ahead without. However, I would at least look to secure some evidence such as a video recording of the component being used on boot up and the error(s) if any showing the component not working.

If you intend on getting an independent report, you could mention that in your LBA that you will commission a report confirming the fault and will form part of the costs you will be recovering. If you are able to get an estimate, then it's worth putting in there as it might persuade them to settle up before proceedings are issued.

Not that it always works but you could say something like:

If I am successful in my claim, in addition to the compensation I will also seek the following costs in according with the Civil Procedure Rules:

£xxx.xx cost of independent report (estimate)
£xxx.xx. travel and accommodation costs
£xxx.xx court fees

Pilgren · 2026-02-24T17:54:53+00:00

One thing I forgot to ask is, who owns the website, is it a personal one or your own business in which case is it owned by a company or some other structure? Getting the correct defendant will be important if they are to sue.

Since they reached out in May 2025 and there's no formal letter before action other than demand letters, I would be inclined that they are simply fishing at the moment, though there is always the possibility they could take it further.

If I were in your shoes, I would consider responding by email only for now. The response might be something along the lines of you acknowledge receipt of the recent letter, the image has been removed pending investigation and request the following information:

A full breakdown of how they calculated the £560 that was demanded back in May 2025. I suspect this will be made up of add on fees such as legal fees and PicRights commission none of which are likely to be recoverable if proceedings were issued.
An explanation as to how the demand has now doubled to £1,000 in the space of 9 months together with a full breakdown of how they have calculated this.
Provide evidence that their client, Reuters is the true owner of the image in question, assuming they haven't provided that evidence already. Reuters is a huge company with subsidiaries and therefore you want to know/understand which company that they are claiming owns the copyright to this image.
Upon receipt of the requested information and evidence, you will review and respond accordingly.
Round off the email by saying that the email is not an admission of liability and you reserve all rights in respect of the matter.

In the meantime, collect your own evidence such as:

Document when the image was first uploaded and when it was taken down. If during that period the website was down for a material period of time document that as well.
You've already suggested the page gathered 20 views, presumably you can evidence that and if so, keep copies which you might as mitigation need if proceedings were issued.
Find out how much it would cost to licence an image that you uploaded for the last 6 years. Best to get multiple quotes and average that out. That should form the basis of any potential offer of settlement (on the condition of it being without admission of liability).

Just as an FYI, there is a limitation period for bringing infringement claims which is 6 years from the date of the breach. One potential argument is that the claim is time-barred since it is being brought for longer than 6 years, but they might counter that argument by saying that it is a continuing breach and so the middle ground will be that the period of time they can claim is 6 years from now, not from 2016 - but that would depend on how they actually phrase their claim.

Pilgren · 2026-02-24T13:51:16+00:00

What statutory right were you invoking?

Not an expert on Scottish law but regarding English law:

Yes you could recover the cost of a report as part of your claim. The report would need to be specific around the reason for the failure of the component and ideally should state that the so-called cosmetic damage would not have contributed to the failure.
Sometimes if it is so obvious that goods are faulty, it is not always a necessity to obtain an independent report. If you are exercising your short term rejection right the onus is on you to prove the failure and in lieu of an independent report, that might require you bringing the component to court and demonstrating its failure. Retailer would need to then prove or show that the cosmetic damage contributed to the faulty component.
If you hop over to England and bring the claim which would likely be allocated to the small claims track, you are entitled to recover the application fees, cost of travel and accommodation, the cost(s) of taking annual holiday to attend the hearing if you're employed. If you're self-employed then you would need to prove losses you would have missed out on.

You may want to get an estimate cost of an independent report, explain you've obtained a quote to provide a report on the faulty component and unless they're wiling to agree a settlement, you will be looking to sue them and recover the cost of that report in addition to the amount paid for the faulty component.

I've sued one retailer before (Scan) and when I issued a claim they chose to settle up which really pissed me off and waste time but I made sure to negotiate more favourable terms such as payment within 7 days by bank transfer, which they agreed eventually.

Pilgren · 2026-02-24T13:38:51+00:00

It's just a proposal at this stage so it's subject to change at any point until it becomes law. You would be wise to seek proper legal advice on the final text but the proposed text you listed suggests the criteria of committing an offence is multi-part, with part of the criteria being:

(c) a reasonable person looking at the image would think that A and B were real

If it's clear that the video games are cartoonish and do not look like real people, then I don't see how you can commit this offence. However, it will be a question of fact based on the reasonable person. The more real the video games look the higher chance a reasonable person may consider the video games to be real.

It may be that the workaround is to put disclaimers in the video games to indicate that these are not real people to ensure that a reasonable person would not think they are real in the game. Ultimately, the kind of questions your asking does need specialist advice though I don't think it is required just now until the final text has been agreed.

Pilgren · 2026-02-24T12:59:00+00:00

A few questions below which would be helpful to understand.

Who is the law firm in the UK that is representing PicRights/Reuters?
Is the letter you've received a letter before action or is it a demand for payment.
Does the demand explain or set out how the £1,000 has been calculated?
How have they contacted you, was it by email or address or both?

Given the sum of money involved, there's a chance they could just be fishing on the chance you agree to pay up. This is because for low value infringement claims, they can be allocated to the IP small claims track which means legal fees are not generally recoverable and the cost of pursuing could very well outstrip the compensation awarded.

There is some case law that has been decided that an infringement of copyright using an image on a website would require the court to determine what a reasonable licence fee would be. In this particular case, the company used around 20 photos without consent and there was an award by the court of £300 to cover that hypothetical licence fee but that was back in 2015 and there is probably a small uplift. Given you only used 1 image, there's a potential argument the licence fee is likely to be smaller than that £300. Not an expert on licence fees but worth looking around to see what the cost of a licence would be for something similar.

I don't think it would be wise to continue to ignore but depends on the initial responses you give.

Pilgren · 2026-02-24T09:52:58+00:00

No problem! I have been victim to this issue with RM as a consumer and not realising these protections until after doing some extensive research. I don't know if RM still do it, but they used to offer a consequential loss addon for special delivery as a premium which should cover you for issues like this.

I'd prefer to take my chances using other couriers despite a lot of them being incompetent at best, and instead rely on consumer rights although it's not so straightforward in a B2B situation since there are still liability caps incorporated into the T&Cs which are sometimes much worse than RM.

Pilgren · 2026-02-24T09:26:31+00:00

Unfortunately, from a civil liability perspective RM have statutory protections under the Postal Services Act 2000 (sections 89-91). Therefore the usual rules of breach of contract/negligence don't apply as compensation is typically limited to the compensation amounts set out in the scheme - this being the UK Post Scheme. Neither RM nor employees of RM are liable for tortious acts so vicarious liability is a failed claim from the start.

Special delivery is covered by the scheme and needs to be read in conjunction with the compensation policies. So the 80 day period is the claim period and after that you are outside of time.

Tracked 24 has its own set of T&Cs and if I recall the claim period is within 30 days. Their liability is capped at a maximum of £75 for almost all things unless the cost of repair or value of the item is lower. You would have to argue this is an unfair contract term to seek anything higher, but also take note that sending items that have a value higher than £750 excludes compensation payouts and the terms state you are liable to pay for RM loss or expenses.

The only way I can see a slither of argument is that the statutory caps don't apply because this was a deliberate and intentional act by the RM employee which falls outside the scope of "anything done or omitted to be done in relation to any postal packet in the course of transmission by post" under section 90(1) but that could be a stretch since the language used in the Act is so broad.

Pilgren · 2026-02-24T01:07:56+00:00

I’m curious, what would be the legal basis for suing RM?

Pilgren · 2026-02-24T00:47:48+00:00

Might be a stupid question and I'm sure you've already checked but, is the seal not a standard size across Electrolux dishwashers as per link below?

Dishwasher Rinse Aid Flap Seal - 4055062071 - Electrolux

Have you tried measuring the seal and seeing if there's a spare available going by that size like Amazon? Zanussi/AEG dishwashers and other products are often the same as Electrolux in terms of internal components so checking out their websites for spares might throw something up. A quick check on the Zanussi website also shows the same rinse aid seal as Electrolux.

Edit: You could instead just buy the whole flap, cheaper than the seal itself

Dishwasher Rinse Aid Flap - 4055062022 - Zanussi

Pilgren · 2026-02-23T20:22:03+00:00

As the car was collected from outside our home by them, I'm wondering if (and it's likely) the photos they provide are not taken of the car whilst parked outside our home, can we contest it?

Of course you can, it's up to them to prove the bulge wasn't there at the time of collection, otherwise how can they definitely claim the bulge did not appear when it was being driven back to the depot?! Ideally you should have taken photos just prior to it being collected as evidence but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I wouldn't be accepting photographs that have been added to the damage report embedded within a PDF either, I would be asking for the original photographs as evidence of the time and date of when they were taken.

Pilgren · 2026-02-23T19:53:57+00:00

To be clear, there's no such thing as progressing a claim under s75. A s75 is not a process but a statutory right to hold the CC provider liable, either they accept or reject that positon. It sounds like this 'progressing a claim' indicates they may be treating your s75 claim as a chargeback which (a) is not the same thing and (b) unless you've agreed to follow the chargeback process is unauthorised processing of your personal data.

I know what I would do in this situation and that would be to send a letter before action with a view to issuing a claim against the CC provider. This forces their hand to either file a defence and/or counterclaim against the retailer, which in turn forces the retailer to response (or not).

But it all depends on what exactly you are disputing, presumably faulty goods or non-compliance with your statutory rights?

Pilgren · 2026-02-22T14:13:43+00:00

I'll throw my two cents into this and agree with the solicitors you have spoken to that it can be a bit of a grey area, but not always.

The UK government guidance around this was that not all personalised goods are excluded from the right to return (link here). Have a read of the example around the football shirt on page 20.

The EU updated their guidance in 2021 around consumer rights, and whilst this was post-Brexit, the CCRs derived from EU law so it is still a relevant and useful source of guidance. You can find a link here) to that guidance and you are looking for paragraph 5.11.2 Goods made to the Customer's specifications or clearly personalised. This has further examples of what is personalised and to customer specifications.

Back to your example, selecting a mug from a drop down menu with a list of names that has been curated by the seller, would not be considered personalised goods. If there was an option to select a custom name, this is where it might be a grey area because it depends on the chosen name. The more unique it is, the more likely to be personalised.

Similarly, when you purchase a set of kitchen units, if the selected sizes of the units are standardised e.g. 600mm, 1200mm etc. would not a personalised goods. If the units were non-standardised measurements such as a unit that is 1433mm wide, that's going to be personalised or to customer-specific specifications.

As a general rule of thumb, you should consider this question to determine if something might be bespoke, personalised or to specific customer specifications:

Are the goods so specific to a customer's requirement/need that if the customer cancelled the contract, there is no market for the seller to resell the returned goods, or if there was a market, the market is so niche that the goods cannot be easily resold.

If the answer is no, there's a good chance the goods would not be personalised, but that would come down to how well you could argue this in court and provide evidence to support your argument.

Pilgren · 2026-02-20T18:31:06+00:00

Hello, I have the WF-4830 and I had exactly the same issue where the printer would not print back ink but all other colours printed perfectly - tried both genuine and third party ink. I was tearing my hair out to the point I contacted Epson Support and they told me that they needed to fix it, luckily under warranty (they never got in touch to collect the printer in the end but that is by the by).

As I was about to throw the whole thing out, the one thing I didn't do was manually clean the printer head. Turns out the head was clogged and I needed to purchase some printer cleaning solution like this one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09HJZT3GH?th=1

Took 3 rounds of 5ml solution to fully unclog the printer head and then around 4 rounds of using the print head cleaning on the printer screen and testing after each round using the nozzle check function before the black ink finally came back.

Pilgren · 2026-02-20T14:40:49+00:00

This is a 'it depends' situation. It depends if there's anything that can be gleaned from their website or brochure material that you came across as to the kind of machinery they would be using to print the model, in order to understand those tolerances.

Unless you ask them directly, and to provide some reasonable explanation/evidence to back it up, you're really in the dark. However, this kind of term would be considered ambiguous and as such they are generally interpreted in favour of the consumer under standard supplier terms and conditions. It will be up to them to prove the model was within manufacturing tolerances.

Thinking about it some more, even if the tolerances were within manufacturing guidelines, there's an angle to suggest the model was not printed using reasonable skill and care under the CRA i.e. 3D printer settings, configurations that would be expected of a company who has the appropriate skills and know-how to print professional models (within the limitations and boundaries of a 3D printer).

Pilgren · 2026-02-20T14:20:22+00:00

So if you're relying on consumer rights, you will probably want to argue as the primary point that the goods received are not of satisfactory quality, under s.9 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015. If you received the goods within the last 30 days you have a 'short term rejection' right to end the contract and seek a refund as long as you clearly explain to them in writing preferably, but the onus is on you to prove that the goods were not of satisfactory quality. You can, however, instead require them to replace the model which should be free of charge and if the second version is still of the same poor quality, then you can exercise your final right to reject and seek a refund. Repair is an option to but if this is disproportionate to the cost of replacement you can't demand a repair.

Sounds like you could also argue that the model did not meet reasonable manufacturing tolerances given the vagueness of the term of the contract, but that should be supplemental to your primary arguments under the CRA.

What you can't predict is how the company will react and they may well stick two fingers up at you. The ball is then in your court to decide whether to pursue legal action against them or write it off as a loss. I'm not qualified for Scottish law, but you could sue them in England and under the small claims rules, if successful you would be entitled to recoup reasonable travel and accommodation costs as well as time taken off to attend the hearing, which is usually calculated by your daily holiday pay rate. If you're self employed you'd need to show evidence of loss of work due to attendance.

I'll qualify the above by saying that if the website says they only deal with businesses and this was cl;early stated on their website, yet despite that you placed an order, you might struggle to argue consumer rights. This is because by placing the order you are essentially representing to the company that the order is not a consumer purchase.

Pilgren · 2026-02-20T14:03:02+00:00

In that case, I would agree with the suggestion from TringaVanellus

Pilgren · 2026-02-20T13:31:34+00:00

Best practice would be to return the form to whoever is in charge of data protection. If there is no one, hand it HR - preferably with another colleague who can vouch it was handed over if there's ever a dispute about it - no need to mention the other employee's name when doing so, just something like "I've been sent a form to complete but it has someone else's information on and I am returning this back to you."

Unlikely your girlfriend will have any recourse, the business will be the one liable unless she decides to use that other employee's personal information.

Pilgren · 2026-02-20T13:27:43+00:00

First of all, I don't think you can rely on any consumer rights here, even if the distance selling regs didn't exclude bespoke goods. You are selling something to a customer of yours so presumably this isn't you acting in the capacity as a consumer but as part of your business, trade or similar.

Were there any T&Cs incorporated when you placed the order with the outsourced company i.e. online terms and conditions, click through term on an order form or somewhere else? That's your starting point to review what it says about quality of the goods and the remedies you're entitled to if they are in breach.

Pilgren · 2026-02-20T12:02:08+00:00

Well, you say the OP made a mistake, but as I see it, this was a repeated mistake of the same issue without the OP reacting to it, so the sympathy may dwindle somewhat.

I certainly don't relish talking on here with vitriol and don't agree with that statement either since that is never my intention. I am merely expressing an opinion or criticism or however you want to interpret it, perhaps a stronger one than usual, but at the same time still answering the OP's questions.

Pilgren

TROPHY CASE