Retten i Aarhus denies DKK 900 deposit refund in disputed chair-cover colour order

Retten i Aarhus has denied Signe Holm’s claim for the return of a DKK 900 deposit from Foldely Møbler ApS for a custom chair cover. She sought repayment in exchange for returning the unused cover, saying she had ordered green rather than blue.

The deposit remains with the shop. But the decision carries an important limit: the court did not find that Foldely had manufactured or delivered the cover. Holm lost because she had not proved her entitlement to a refund, not because the shop had proved that it completed the order.

The decisive document was an emailed order confirmation describing a blue custom chair cover costing DKK 1,800, with a DKK 900 deposit. It asked the customer to check the details. Although presented repeatedly, it remained one record, not separate evidence of later events.

The confirmation supported the written order’s colour, but its reach stopped there. The request to check the details did not itself establish that Holm accepted everything in it, nor exclude a later change. The difficulty for Holm was that no produced message or testimony established that Foldely subsequently agreed to green.

The consumer-promise principle required the seller to honour specific commitments. It could not resolve the dispute without proof of a commitment to supply green.

The shop’s evidence also had gaps. The confirmation did not establish manufacture, delivery or a loss equal to the deposit. Nevertheless, those gaps did not themselves prove Holm’s refund claim. With no established basis for full repayment and no evidence from which to calculate a smaller award, the court refused both.

Holm maintained that green was the agreed final colour and relied on the rule requiring sellers to keep their promises. Her submissions, however, did not identify a particular conversation or produce a message recording the shop’s acceptance of the change.

Foldely relied on the blue order confirmation and said it retained the deposit because the cover was custom-made to that order. It asked the court to deny or reduce the refund.

The shop also acknowledged the limits of its position: it had no separate record showing whether the cover was made, delivered or what ultimately happened to it. The court treated that explanation as a submission, not independent proof.

Holm’s account was that she selected green in the shop, received a confirmation specifying blue and requested green the following morning, before production. The supplied background described a saved exchange acknowledging green and said a blue cover later arrived.

That background account did not become a proved sequence at the hearing. The judgment identified the confirmation as the only specific order record presented; the purported acknowledgement was not produced as evidence.

The outcome therefore leaves the cover’s manufacture and delivery unresolved. It establishes only that, on the record before the court, Holm had not shown why the deposit had to be returned.