English is my second langue so I tried my best to keep it precise and clear. My apology if I failed to do so.
Dad signed a contract with GreenEngineering on 20/02/17. He paid a $200 deposit. The contract stated cancellation period is within 5 business day for newspaper advertising clients and 10 business days for door to door tele sale. The purchase was made at a physical store of Green Engineering so I figured we fall into the 10 days period category. Dad did not know this because he failed to ask about it and the fine prints were on the contract but were in English, which he doesn't really speak but that is no excuse, I understand.
Contact state installation will begin approximately around 3-8 weeks. After more than 6 weeks, dad went back to the shop to check installation progress and the Store was gone. Dad was worried that he was conned so he called the sale rep and inquired. Sale Rep couldn't offer an explanation for the delay and told him physical store is gone permanently and if he needs sale support then call or email Green Engineering support. He's tech-illiterate and speaks broken English so that's a no deal for him. So he wanted to cancel the contract altogether then and there, on the ground that the installation took too long and it will be inconvenient for him as a customer to get support if he ever needs it in the future. Please note this is the Sale Rep my dad spoke to at the store, he also speaks my dad's native tongue.
Failing to convince dad to stick with the contract, Rep agreed to refund the deposit but says he can only refund $150, the other $50 is kept as a cancellation fee. Notice how he failed to inform my dad about the cancellation cool down period. If he did, we would probably begrudgingly accepted it and move on. Anywho, 2 weeks passed, we heard nothing from sale rep, tried to call again and did not get through. This was late April.
Dad finally brought this to my attention, so I get in contacts with Green Engineering. The sale assistant took my details down and advised us to wait for a call from them, that never came. All through May and June, I rang multiple times, to see if they can fast track my case and got the same memo: 'wait for us to call you'.
23/06/17 is when a sale rep contacted me, through a text message no less. Basically said they can't refund since cooling down period is 5 days after contract signed so forget about it. I got frustrated and told her to properly call me like they promised, I deserved that at least after waiting for more than a month. I rang her (phone rep is a female) next business day. Tried to explain the situation and see if they will take any responsibility for what their other sale rep said to my dad regarding the refund. She listened to me, barely and very disinterestedly I may add and said she'll contact me next week. This was on 27/06/17. I'm tempted to call her again to enquire but doubt if this will go anywhere.
In Summary: male Sale-Rep told a lie about the refund process and disappeared. Female sale rep from call centre informed me about official refund policy but basically said Green Engineering is not responsible for the action of their employee and whatever the employee told the customer. Dad obviously preached the contract term by canceling after the cool down period.
My question is:
* Is pursuing the deposit refund worth it? My dad is in the wrong as he did not read the fine print and follow refund guideline, right?
* Can the company be held accountable for what their employee said and did?
I know my story is long-winded and confusing, I guess I just want to vent my frustration about my dad and Green Engineering less than stellar customer service onto strangers on the internet. Thank you for anyone who offer your 2 cents about this.
I'd be removing any reference to GE which is globally recognised as General Electric, not Green Engineering.