Forum asks Samsung to refund customer for faulty handset
Granting relief to an unhappy purchaser of a mobile phone,the District Consumer Redressal Forum,in a recent order,asked the manufacturing company to return the money paid by him at 12 per cent interest and Rs 10,000 as compensation to cover the cost of litigation and the mental anguish he had gone through.
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Granting relief to an unhappy purchaser of a mobile phone,the District Consumer Redressal Forum (DCRF),in a recent order,asked the manufacturing company to return the money paid by him at 12 per cent interest and Rs 10,000 as compensation to cover the cost of litigation and the mental anguish he had gone through.
Thane resident George Antiserel had moved the DCRF,Thane after a Samsung S 8300 Platinum Red handset he bought on August 14,2009,started acting up the very next day. According to his plaint filed through his lawyer Swapna Kode,Antiserel had contended that he had bought the handset for Rs 23,500 along with a four GB memory card for Rs 300. On August 15,2009,he noticed that the date panel of the phone had malfunctioned. He took the phone back to K K Telephone,a shop in Thane where he had made the purchase. It was returned to him two days later,however,its various functions camera,date and recording – kept failing one after the other.
On November 28,2009,Antiserel,a real estate broker,filed a complaint with the forum and sought the return of his money paid for the phone along with damages for the inconvenience. On March 17,2010,Antiserel sent a notice to the respondents K K Telephone and Samsung (India) Electronics through the Consumer Education and Research Society. When they failed to acknowledge it,he sent them a legal notice on May 24,2010. He had claimed compensation of Rs 3.33 lakh.
The DCRF observed that despite repeated repairs,the handset was not fully functional. This means,the forum observed,that the handset had a manufacturing defect and the respondents were guilty of selling the same to Antiserel. The forum members held that it would be appropriate for the manufacturers to return the cost of the defective handset to the petitioner at an interest rate of 12 per cent.
Observing that even after getting the handset repaired several times,Antiserel only faced mental anguish the court asked the company to pay Rs 5,000 as compensation and Rs 5,000 as litigation costs to him.
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