Valencia civil court denies €149 refund over replacement vacuum’s alleged charging failure

The civil court in Valencia denied Inés Beltrán’s request to return a replacement cordless vacuum to Brisa Doméstica SL and recover her €149 purchase price. It entered judgment for the shop and ordered no payment by either party.

Beltrán said the replacement would not start even after charging overnight. The central question was not whether she had complained, which the shop accepted, but whether the evidence established that the replacement had failed. The court found that it did not.

The receipt reliably established the €149 purchase and the later exchange for the same model. It did not record a defect, a test of the replacement or a promise to refund the price. Although presented three times, it remained one document, not three independent sources of support.

Beltrán’s account provided some support for her claim, the court said. But no testimony from the witness she mentioned appeared in the hearing record, and there was no test result or further account explaining what had been observed beyond the reported charging failure.

That left unresolved whether the vacuum was faulty, the charging setup caused the problem or another explanation applied. Because Beltrán sought the refund, she had to establish the failure; Brisa did not have to prove that the appliance worked.

The rule requiring sellers to honour specific quality promises did not remove that evidential requirement. Nor did describing the transaction as a scam establish deception. Without a proven failure, the court found insufficient support for return and repayment.

Beltrán relied on the receipt and her account that overnight charging had not enabled the replacement to start. She disputed that a blinking light showed proper charging and maintained that the exchange had not solved the problem.

Brisa argued that the receipt proved the transaction, not the defect. It said it had offered to demonstrate how to connect and check the charging setup before refusing a refund, while expressly acknowledging that it could not say whether Beltrán attended or whether any demonstration occurred.

The court did not treat that offer as proof of a working vacuum, a resolved complaint or a completed check that Beltrán had declined.

Beltrán bought the cordless vacuum on 6 May 2025. The receipt recorded an exchange for the same model on 9 May, after which she reported that the replacement also would not start.

The ruling turns on the limits of the hearing evidence, not a finding that her experience was untrue. It leaves the appliance’s actual condition unresolved: denying the refund did not establish that the replacement was functional.