Beware Amazon!

As regular readers will know, I'm a big fan of the fairly cheap and very clear small LCD screens made by Waveshare, available via Amazon, amongst others.

If you use Amazon regularly, you will soon come to realise that it is not only a seller and distributor of products it stocks, but a kind of 'open air market', where Amazon provides the platform for others - pretty much anybody - to sell upon.

Amazon, being American, has a peculiar view of consumer rights such as apply in the UK.  It has a strange 'returns window', which bears no resemblance to the 'reasonable period' available for UK consumers to assess any given product's suitability and quality. 

The difference is that Amazon decide how long you have to return the item, whereas the law is more flexible; you might have much longer to assess a product under consumer law.  You also have the benefit of a legally-enforceable guarantee in the UK (one year in most cases), whereas if you buy it from China, via Amazon, no such enforcement is possible.

This is rather important, because an LCD screen costing £54 is obviously expected to function properly after just 3 months of use  - which my latest and third Waveshare screen isn't.  It's developed a serious flicker that is not seen when the same Raspberry Pi is connected to my other two Waveshare screens, so it's clearly defective.

But I'm outside Amazon's convenient 'reinterpretation' of consumer law in the UK, and they won't issue a refund until the seller - in China - approves a return.  In fairness, many big Chinese companies are enthusiastic to develop a good brand reputation, and Waveshare may well replace or refund via Amazon (in fact, they took just hours to get me to send videos of the problem to them).  But it's by no means certain with all non-UK suppliers and if everybody just goes to ground, a UK consumer is left with, in practice, no legal remedy at all.

OK, it's not the end of the world if I'm unable to get a replacement for a £54 screen.  But it's rubbish that Amazon have these compulsory selling agreements with users that effectively ride roughshod over the consumer rights of those buying products via their UK platform.

I still think Waveshare screens are very good; I was just unlucky with one out of three I have being defective. 

But please don't buy electronics items of anything other than extremely low value from Amazon, because their terms and conditions potentially leave you firmly in the cold.  A list of UK distributors, who are legally obliged to follow UK consumer rights, can be found here, and back a level on the website, for other countries, too.

Information about your rights in the UK can be found here.