Weird and wonderful returns of 2018: can you beat these?

What does a luxury SUV, a Christmas tree, a wedding dress and a pair of secondhand gloves have in common? They were all items people attempted to return as faulty.

Last year, tens of thousands of people used our free faulty goods returns tool to help write concise letters to retailers.

We helped people return:

• • ■ £1.8 million luxury SUV car that kept breaking down.

• • ■ A £50,000 endless pool because the current didn’t work.

• • ■ A £5,100 bespoke wedding dress which was filled with pins.

• • ■ A £16,000 lame horse.

• • ■ A £59 damaged Christmas tree.

• • ■ A £4,300 engagement ring which was damaged.

• • ■ A £1,500 ‘red thingy’ from a motorcycle shop which keeps ‘conking out’.

• ■ A £6.99 pair of gloves from a charity shop.

Someone even tried to return a dog after the owner did a DNA test and found they’d been misled while buying their mutt.

Read more: what other items people tried to return

Your rights

As part of our research into faulty goods and returns, we asked more than 2,000 people about their experiences.

We found two in five people bought something in the last year which was either faulty when it arrived or developed a fault within the first six months.

If you buy something and the first time you use it within 30 days, you find it’s faulty the Consumer Rights Act (CRA) is pretty simple: the retailer must give you a full refund or, if you wish, replace it.

Between 30 days and 6 months after the purchase, you have to give the retailer a chance to repair or replace it before giving you a refund if that attempt doesn’t work.

Guide: how to return a faulty product.

Faulty goods

I’ve found this six-month window very helpful in the past, as often it’s not always apparent that your new possession has a fault.

I recently got a new tablet and after a few uses, found the battery just wasn’t holding it’s charge.

It took longer than 30 days for me to spot that it was faulty, but thanks to the CRA I was able to go back to the retailer and they quickly sent a replacement which works perfectly well.

Unfortunately, we don’t know the outcome of the returns and whether they were successful… personally, I’m most invested in what happened to the dog.

But we’d like to know if you’ve managed to return anything weird and wonderful? Or have you had a faulty product only for the retailer to dig their heels in and ignore your rights?