Selling defective hard drive costs city-based outlet dear

Amarjot Kaur

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 22

A city-based photographer, Suresh Kumar, filed a complaint against Gurugram and Chandigarh centres of Toshiba India Private Limited along with its service centre and city’s HIM Computech for selling him a corrupted hard drive.

The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum-I, after hearing his case, held HIM Computech guilty of making an unauthorised sale and ordered it to refund the hard drive’s price Rs 3,800, Rs 11,000 that Kumar spent on getting his data recovered, Rs 5,000 as compensation for harassment and Rs 5,000 as litigation expenses.

Suresh Kumar, who is a photographer by profession, purchased a hard drive (Toshiba 1TB) for storing his recorded data of marriages and other functions from HIM Computech on January 28, 2017, for Rs 3,800. On February 5, 2017, when he was using the hard drive for uploading pictures and videos, to his utter shock he found that noting got stored on the drive.

Despite making all efforts, when the missing data could not be displayed, he contacted Toshiba India Private Limited, who guided him to the company’s representative. Accordingly, he took the hard drive to the Toshiba service centre where he was informed that the drive had been corrupted and required necessary repairs. Since the hard drive was under warranty, Kumar requested the service centre to replace it with a new one and that all data stored in the hard drive should also be recovered as it was important, but in vain.

Eventually, Kumar rushed to a data recovery lab and succeeded in recovering the data, for which he paid Rs 11,000. Finally, he filed a complaint, a notice of which was sent to the opposite parties.

Contesting the complaint, Toshiba’s Delhi and Chandigarh branch pleaded that HIM Computech made an unauthorised sale of the hard drive as it was not an authorised distributor of Toshiba and Toshiba India Private Limited. Stating its list of authorised distributors, the company adhered to its website and claimed that Intex, Bit Defender, Asus, Dell and HP were only its authorised distributors.

The counsel for the complainant deleted the service centre’s name from the array and HIM Computech, admitting that Kumar purchased Toshiba 1TB hard drive against a proper bill, asserted that it has only sold the hard drive as per the two-year warranty given by the manufacturer. However, after considering the evidences, the court found no warranty card on the record issued by Toshiba for the said drive.

“In the absence of any warranty card, Toshiba has no legally enforceable liability qua the defects in the product. Thus, it can be safely deduced that the warranty, which was offered for two years, was by HIM Computech only as inscribed on the cash memo,” read the court order.

During the course of arguments, HIM Computech’s counsel highlighted that it purchased the drive from Balaji Solutions Private Limited through tax invoice-cum-delivery challan dated December 22, 2016.

Interestingly, this number tallied with the number inscribed on the retail invoice as well as on the backside of the disputed hard drive. However, the court deciphered that HIM Computech cannot derive any benefit from the tax invoice-cum-delivery challan as Balaji Solutions Private Limited through which the disputed hard drive was purchased was a party before the forum and held HIM Computech guilty of indulging in unfair trade. The opposite party no. 4 has certainly and definitely indulged into unfair trade practice and is deficient in rendering proper services to Kumar.

Told to refund price, pay relief

• The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum-I, after hearing his case, held HIM Computech guilty of making an unauthorised sale and ordered it to refund the hard drive’s price of Rs 3,800, Rs 11,000 that Kumar spent on getting his data recovered, Rs 5,000 as compensation for harassment and Rs 5,000 as litigation expenses