UK retailer Zavvi made a bit of a mistake in the past week that is going to cost it a huge amount of money. When Tearaway for the Vita was released they accidently shipped the Tearaway bundle, with a bundled PS Vita, to all the game’s pre-order customers instead of the game on its own.

With the game retailing at GBP19.99 and the bundle going for GBP169.99 there is quite some discrepancy there.

You would think however that Zavvi would simply ask for the consoles back seeing as they weren’t paid for and that is exactly what they did… however it’s not that simple.

According to the UK long distance selling laws these Vita’s now actually belong to everyone who received them, the law itself isn’t even convoluted as it simply states

“If you’ve been sent unsolicited goods, you are entitled to treat them as an unconditional gift and do with them as you choose. You are not required to keep them for any amount of time and you are certainly not required to pay for them. Any attempt to demand payment (by threatening means or otherwise) is unlawful.”

This law was probably brought in to protect people from that old scam where people mailed you goods and them demanded money for them or for you to return them, which also puts consumers out of pocket. . But what it has inadvertently done is painted Zavvi into a corner where any logical person can see this was an honest mistake but at the same time the law is the law.

It doesn’t look like Zavvi is going to take this lying down though as they recently sent these letters to those people who decided to hold onto their goods.

Honestly I’m in two minds here, on the one side the people obviously don’t deserve the Vitas and should just give them back. But on the other side I like seeing these corporates getting slapped around a bit by the consumers.

So tell me, would you give the Vita back if this happened to you?

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