Got To Glow

The laptop died with the fan still spinning: black screen, charger light on. The retailer's reply ran to one line, take it up with the manufacturer. That refusal feels final. It isn't. The card you paid with may owe you the money when the shop won't, and your chargeback rights are older and tougher than any returns policy.

My rule with a dead gadget: settle the money first, the machine second.

Can I do a chargeback if the seller refuses a refund?

Yes, a refusal from the seller is usually the trigger for a card claim rather than the end of it, because US and UK law both let the card company stand in for a shop that won't pay.

In the US the route is the Fair Credit Billing Act. Its quality-claim section, 15 USC 1666i, lets you hold back the disputed amount on a credit card after a good-faith attempt to settle with the seller. The catch is price and distance, and both bite on a gadget ordered online from another state, unless the store issued the card. The FTC's guidance (as of 2024) is plain that debit cards get fraud protection, not faulty-goods rights. So anything costly goes on credit.

That is the payment-side sequel to who pays when a device fails after the maker's warranty and what bricked smart-device owners can claim from maker versus seller. Those settle who owes you. This is how you collect.

Britain goes further. Under Section 75, paying any part of the price by credit card, even a deposit, makes the lender jointly liable for all of it, says the Financial Ombudsman Service. A £50 deposit on a £1,200 laptop puts the full £1,200 on the card company. By my arithmetic that is £24 of protection per pound charged, and almost nobody uses it on purpose.

Four numbers decide whether a claim is worth starting: the FTC's US letter deadline, the ombudsman's UK ceiling, and two figures from Mastercard's 2025 State of Chargebacks survey of issuers and merchants, as summarised by Chargeback Gurus in June 2025.

The letter deadline is where people lose. It belongs to the billing-error route for goods not delivered as agreed, and its clock starts at the first statement showing the charge, not when the laptop died. Keep a dated copy; the issuer must then answer within fixed limits.

Chargeback rights in the US and UK, side by side

The UK protects a credit-card buyer more fully than the US does, because Section 75 has no distance test and covers part-payments, while the US quality claim carries price and location limits that many online purchases trip.

Read the left column first: rows run from qualifying to where you're exposed. US rows rest on 15 USC 1666i and FTC guidance; UK rows on the Financial Ombudsman Service.

In Britain, a credit card turns almost any gadget above the floor into a legal claim. In America, it depends on where the seller sits, unless a store card strips those limits away.

How long do I have to file a chargeback, and what sinks a claim?

Deadlines run from different dates: UK chargebacks count from delivery of the faulty item, US dispute letters from the first statement showing the charge, and neither from the day the device broke.

The chargeback is weaker than it looks. In the UK it is card-scheme practice, not law, and the ombudsman says your bank doesn't have to raise one. So I'd skip the usual advice to just call your bank: ask for a Section 75 claim by name, and keep chargeback as the fallback.

Does Section 75 cover purchases made through PayPal?

Often not cleanly. Section 75 needs a direct link between you, the lender and the seller, and the ombudsman says that link "isn't always straightforward" when a wallet sits in between. Chargeback is then your likelier route, and pay-later plans open a similar gap, covered in our guide to Buy Now Pay Later refunds on financed devices.

If the bank says no, complain formally. Once its deadline in the table passes, or it sends a final response, the ombudsman can order a refund plus interest, free. Lawyer Monthly's November 2025 guide notes a six-month limit from that final letter.

Watch for:

• A goodwill offer framed as final. Refuse it in writing if it falls short.
• Returning the device before photographing the fault.
• Seller emails that stall while your deadlines expire.

Settle the money, then the machine. This week, send your card issuer a dated written dispute with the refusal and photos attached, naming Section 75 if you're in the UK. As for the laptop: replace it, don't repair it. A device that fails early and a seller that won't back it have told you what they're worth.

The Wemo Mini on the hall shelf still clicks when you press its button. Ask Alexa to turn it on and nothing happens: on 31 January 2026 Belkin shut the Wemo cloud and app, per its Wemo support page, killing remote access and voice control. That is a bricked smart device in 2026. It powers on. It just can't do its job.

Keep, repair or replace? The answer depends less on Belkin than on where you bought it, and when.

Who pays for a bricked smart device after the warranty ends?

If the maker's warranty has run out, Belkin owes you nothing, so any money has to come from statute: in the UK and EU that means the retailer, and in the US it usually means nobody at all.

Belkin's terms are plain: refunds only for products still under warranty on or after 31 January 2026, with proof of purchase. Past that, look elsewhere; it is the same split that decides who pays for a device failure in month 14.

Outside the US, the claim was never really against Belkin. The UK Consumer Rights Act 2015 (sections 9, 10 and 24) requires goods of satisfactory quality, durability included, and that duty sits with the shop. Article 7(3) of the EU Sale of Goods Directive 2019/771 goes further: the seller must supply the updates a buyer could reasonably expect, and retailers must now spell that out in the EU legal guarantee notice and its new label.

The US is thinner, and the stock lemon-law advice is out of date here. California's SB 898 would have required a disclosed minimum support period of at least five years, but the CalMatters Digital Democracy bill record shows it held in committee on 13 August 2026. No state law yet gives a US buyer that right.

Four numbers set your leverage, drawn from Belkin's Wemo page, the FTC staff review PIRG summarised in November 2024 (as of 2024) and the EU Cyber Resilience Act timetable.

That disclosure gap is the one US owners can use. The FTC said silence on support periods may breach the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act and the FTC Act, so a missing end date is grounds for a free deception complaint.

Smart home end of support: US, UK and EU rights compared

The UK and EU give a buyer a claim against the retailer that can outlast the maker's warranty, while the US offers only the warranty itself and a possible deception complaint to the FTC.

Read the table by your receipt, not your passport: who pays first, then what you can claim, then the rules behind it.

The purchase cut-offs in the third row are our own arithmetic: each country's claim window counted back from the shutdown date. A US owner past warranty has no row that helps.

Do Wemo devices still work after 31 January 2026?

Some do: Wemo plugs and switches paired to Apple Home before the shutdown keep working locally, and the Thread models are unaffected, but everything else on the Wemo line-up lost its smart functions.

Survivors include the Mini Smart Plug, the Video Doorbell and the WLS0503 switch. Insight, Link and the Crock-Pot are replacements.

Where a refund claim against the shop falls apart

A retailer claim can fail for ordinary reasons: no proof of purchase, a device that was never paired locally before the cutoff, or a shop arguing that a cloud service was never part of what it sold you.

That last argument is the real grey area. No UK court has ruled on whether switching off an app makes a plug unsatisfactory, or none I can find. My view: for a device sold as smart, with the app on the box, a shop will struggle to call the app optional.

A plug on a dead app also gets no patches, the exposure covered in how to protect your smart home from cyber threats. The UK product security regime, per its gov.uk policy paper, makes makers publish a minimum security update period, so you see the end date before paying. It awards no refund, though.

• Find the receipt first; Belkin and the shop will both ask for it.
• Don't factory-reset an Apple Home Wemo; Belkin's list covers only devices set up before the shutdown.
• A private second-hand sale gives you no statutory claim against anyone.

So: keep, repair or replace? Keep anything on the Apple Home or Thread lists. Repair is off the table: nothing a screwdriver can reach is broken. Replace the rest, but first, if you're in the UK or EU and your receipt clears the cut-off, write to the shop this week asking for a price reduction under the Consumer Rights Act or EU directive, receipt attached.

The hinge went first. Fourteen months after delivery, the lid began lifting off its base on every opening, and the screen flickered past ninety degrees. The maker's one-year warranty had lapsed, and its support chat offered a paid repair quote. That quote is the wrong first move. In the UK, statutory warranty rights outlive the manufacturer's promise by years, and the business that owes you the fix is the shop that sold the laptop, not the brand on the lid.

Can I claim for a faulty laptop after the warranty has expired?

Yes, in the UK a laptop that develops a fault after the maker's warranty ends can still be claimed for, because the Consumer Rights Act gives you rights against the retailer that last far longer than a one-year guarantee.

The warranty in the box is a voluntary extra. Your statutory rights are the floor beneath it, and a 2026 Which? guide to faulty goods, updated on 1 September, is plain that they run against the retailer rather than the manufacturer. So write to the shop: the brand can sell you a repair, but only the retailer owes you one. EU buyers now see this spelled out before paying, via the new mandatory EU legal guarantee notice on product pages.

Timing is harder. For six months the law presumes a fault was there on arrival; after that, Which? says, the burden is yours. At month 14 that means a written report from an independent technician saying the fault is inherent, not a knock. I'd pay for that report before arguing with anyone, because it costs less than losing the argument, usually.

Paying in instalments doesn't move that duty, though refunds on a split plan follow the lender's rules, as our guide to Buy Now Pay Later refunds and statutory cover on device financing sets out.

Four numbers settle what a month-14 claim gets you. Three come from that Which? guidance; the window share is my own arithmetic from its limits, not a published figure.

The repair-attempt rule is the lever most people never pull. Once the shop has had its go and the fault returns, the fight stops being about proof and becomes about what you get back. Keep every job sheet.

How do statutory warranty rights compare in the UK and EU?

Both outlast the maker's warranty, but the UK gives you a longer window to pursue the retailer, while EU rules since July 2026 reward repair and make manufacturers fix some kit after the guarantee ends.

The European Commission says the right to repair directive applies from 31 July 2026, and it changes the maths for EU phone and tablet owners. Read each row as a question for the shop or maker.

UK buyers have time but carry the proof; EU buyers earn extra cover for choosing repair. Laptops fall into a gap, because the Commission's post-guarantee list names phones and tablets, not laptops. Whether a battery that fades at month 14 counts as a fault or as fair wear is, in my opinion, the least settled question here.

Where an out of warranty repair claim falls apart

Month-14 claims usually fail on evidence and paperwork rather than on the law itself, because the fault has to be shown to be inherent and the retailer must get its chance to repair first.

US buyers start elsewhere. The FTC's warranty guidance, last updated in December 2025, says implied warranties such as the implied warranty of merchantability come from state law, last up to four years in some states, and can be excluded when a seller marks goods "as is" where the state allows it. Read the receipt first: two words can erase the claim.

I'd also push back on the checkout pitch. An extended warranty mostly duplicates rights you already hold against the shop for faults, so it earns its price only through accidental damage cover. Buy it for the drop, not the defect. Who pays gets murkier still when an AI shopping agent buys the wrong thing on your behalf.

• Paying an independent repairer first hands the retailer an argument that the repair caused the fault.
• Accidental damage is never a statutory claim: a screen cracked by a fall is yours to fix.
• Messaging the brand is not a claim; the shop must hear from you in writing.

Repair it, through the retailer. For a month-14 failure with no drop or spill behind it, that is the call. Replace only if the shop's repair fails, and pay a repairer only after a written refusal. This week, dig out the order confirmation and send the shop a dated email that cites the Consumer Rights Act and asks for a repair by a named date.

Related: who owes you a refund for a bricked smart device