Bristol County Court dismisses £180 refund claim over wobbling flat-pack desk

The County Court at Bristol dismissed Leah Mercer's claim for a £180 refund from Owen Bell for a flat-pack desk she said wobbled. Mercer had offered to return the desk in exchange for the money, but the court made neither a refund order nor an order requiring its return.

The dispute turned on when the problem arose: Mercer said the desk rocked before she adjusted a bolt, while Bell disputed that it was faulty when sold. The court found the payment proved, but not a fault at the time of sale.

The receipt established that Mercer paid £180, but did not show the desk's condition or how it was assembled. A later photograph showed a small gap at a joint, without establishing when the gap arose or what caused it.

The court considered Mercer's consistent account that she noticed rocking before adjusting the bolt. A message exchange lent some support to that sequence, but the sequence depended on her description and did not independently establish the desk's condition at sale.

The judge did not treat the absence of a separate record of Mercer's first observation as automatically fatal. Considering the limits of the account, messages and photograph together, however, the court was not satisfied that a sale-time fault had been established.

The court also rejected any conclusion that Mercer caused the gap or assembled the desk incorrectly. Nor did it find that the desk was fault-free. Although the requested refund was limited to the price paid and conditional on return, the underlying fault had not been proved.

Mercer said she noticed the desk rocking before loosening and retightening the bolt. She acknowledged that she could not give a more precise date or produce a separate record of that first observation, but argued that the later photograph did not prove her assembly caused the problem.

Bell argued that Mercer had not proved a fault when the desk was sold. He pointed to the later photograph, the time between purchase and complaint, and his account that no fault was visible in the listing picture. He also described the transaction as private and asked for the claim to be dismissed.

Mercer contacted Bell about the wobble and later sent him a photograph of the joint. The messages recorded her report of the problem and her account of adjusting the bolt after noticing it.

Bell's accounts acknowledged that the listing picture did not prove the desk was fault-free, and the court gave them little weight on its stability. The judge also said that a private sale or delay alone was not a complete answer to a supported quality complaint. The ruling leaves the cause of the wobble unresolved.