I recently went to a designer sample sale and brought a lovely Sophie Hulme handbag for £200. As the till said no exchanges or refunds I thoroughly checked the bag for scratches or faults before I bought it. The next day the metal attachment on the strap broke and the bag is now unusable. After careful inspection, it seemed there was a whole piece in the metal attachment missing that would have been impossible to spot when purchased.
I emailed Sophie Hulme and it has refused even to provide a replacement for the metal attachment and has now stopped answering my emails. I understand the no refunds or exchanges policy, but I feel like my consumer rights have been ignored in this instance. Can you offer any advice? RL, London
Retailers or companies cannot put up signs that limit your consumer rights, and I understand that it is illegal to do so. You paid the company £200 directly for a handbag and you have the same rights – that it has to be of reasonable quality, etc – as if you had bought it in a store.
For the first two weeks Sophie Hulme, which is based in north London, refused to answer our emails or phone calls, or to respond to answerphone messages. It got to the stage that we thought it must have ceased trading. At the 11th hour the company decided it would deal with this matter.
This week the director of operations at the firm contacted you to apologise for the inconvenience. They say they have changed their stance and said that they would always review a bag for a fault, regardless of it being from a sample sale or not. Staff have arranged for a courier to collect the bag to check if they can fix it. If that’s not possible they will offer a refund.
In February, KPMG was appointed joint administrators of SHL Realisations (formerly known as Sophie Hulme Ltd). The business and assets of the company were sold to S Hulme London Ltd. If I were in the market for one of this firm’s handbags I would only be paying for it by credit card.
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