Black Friday shoppers should remember that taking care of receipts is the consumer’s responsibility. However, if the receipt has been lost, the game has not yet been lost, for example in terms of warranty service.
General Secretary of the Consumers’ Association Juha Beurling-Pomoell urges consumers to keep receipts or copies of electronic purchases. Many people make more equipment purchases during Black Friday than usual, and the receipts can easily end up lost.
Although no law obliges the consumer to keep his receipts, the party that sold the product can demand a receipt if the consumer invokes the warranty or fault liability in the event of a device failure, and the purchase of the product from the place in question cannot otherwise be proven.
– If you want to play on the safe side, you should keep the receipts or their copies for the expected life of the device, Beurling-Pomoell says to Iltalehte.
How long is the service life of the device?
The assumed useful life is related to the seller’s fault liability, the duration of which has not been fixed. The goods must withstand what the consumer generally has reasonable grounds to expect in the sale of such goods.
For example, phones, tablets and laptops have an assumed useful life of 3–4 years. The exception is the most valuable models, which can be expected to last even longer.
Can warranty service be done without a receipt?
Beurling-Pomoell reminds that taking care of the receipt is the responsibility of the consumer.
In some electronics stores, the customer’s information is collected for the store’s own warranty, in which case the receipt is not necessarily needed, for example, when taking it for warranty service, but it can be found in the system under the customer’s name. In this case, the information can usually be obtained from the store even after the end of the warranty, if there is a need to invoke, for example, liability for defects.
However, the law does not require companies to write down the customer’s information, but only to offer the customer a receipt.
If the consumer cannot prove the place and time of purchase of the device with a receipt, the situation is still not hopeless.
– Often things are arranged without a receipt, says Beurling-Pomoell, referring to companies’ willingness to offer good customer service and other ways to verify the place and time of purchase.
Is a bank statement valid instead of a receipt?
The Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority says on their websitethat, for example, a payment card receipt, bank statement or retailer’s sticker on the product’s packaging can verify the place and time of purchase.
According to KKV, the consumer’s right to complain about a faulty product does not disappear, even if the receipt cannot be found.
– Sometimes it is enough to show the necessary information that the product is part of the store’s sales selection and it can otherwise be reasonably assumed that the product was purchased from the store in question, says KKV’s website.
However, Beurling-Pomoell underlines that the consumer will get by with the least effort if he can verify the place and time of purchase himself.
– That’s why, by law, the consumer must always be offered a receipt. It is not voluntary. The receipt is so central to the realization of the consumer’s rights.