My wife wanted to buy an awning from the SunSetter company. We didn’t have enough clearance between the roof overhang and the door to go with the fixed awning, so we got the Oasis freestanding awning.
However, this awning is less than spectacular. The ends keep working their way off, it goes out of whack and one end sags while the other one one does not, and water keeps collecting on the sagging ends. In short, it’s a piece of junk for $1700.
It was delivered in 2 pieces. One was in a 10 foot box; the other was in a 16 foot by 3 foot tube that was way too big for us to store anywhere. I had to saw it into several pieces just so the trash company could pick it up. Of course, that was way before we discovered the awning was junk.
So, my wife called Sunsetter and told them about the issues. They told her they’d be happy to refund the money, less any damage we caused (WTF?), if we shipped it to them in the original packaging or equivalent(!!!)
Great - the company plays “gotcha” by including an impossible-to-meet condition in the fine print. Now we are screwed, because my wife paid with a debit card so we don’t have credit card protection.
Any suggestions? I find it hard to believe we are SOL just because we didn’t retain an item that we physically could not keep or store.
My only suggestion is to take a few pictures of it and get it (if you can) to a UPS store or MailBoxes, Etc-type place and have them box it up & ship it.
That sucks for sure. And explains why my basement is full of old boxes for things that have long since been discarded.
I wonder if you offer to pay for the shipping items: tube and other packaging AND eat the cost of any damage they feel you caused - that they might possibly work out the return for you.
Of course you’d rather get your whole investment back - but partial is better than nothing, right?
You can often create a specialized shipping box for odd shaped or oversized items by taping several boxes together. This usually requires a full roll of packing tape, sturdy scissors, and a big load of boxes (or sheet cardboard) to cut apart. A 16 foot long item is usually going to have to be shipped by truck.