Uncollected Goods Act

Sometime back I bought a Google Nexus 6. This is the last one of these Google phones that I will ever buy.

When I broke the screen I discovered that the local phone fixing shop (all of them) couldn’t get the replacement screens.

So I contacted Google. After a bit of fuss and bother they put me onto Motorola. After a bit more fuss and bother they put me in touch with Quantum Service and Logistics Pty Ltd, their local outsourced supplier of customer ‘support’. After a lot more fuss and bother, inclusive of the filling out of duplicate complex web based forms and waiting forever for a courier together with multiple reminders that I was waiting, they now have my phone.

A few day later they send me the email below, which has this little pearler in it;

‘If payment is not received within 90 days of this notice then the device will be disposed of in accordance with the uncollected goods act.’

So I checked the Uncollected Goods Act (who knew we had one?) and in fact they only need to give me 28 days notice before they ‘dispose’ of my phone. What this means is that they can sell it and keep the proceeds without any risk of liabilities.

This is a little cute me-thinks. As the sole source of fixes for this phone they force me to send it to them before they will quote me the job. There is no obvious or published mechanism to get the phone back if I don’t like the quote but they will happily keep the phone if I don’t pay them.

I don’t know about you but this looks like institutionalised extortion to me.