I'm hoping this blows up in Nintendo's faces; they forgot to treat and respect their customers as fellow human beings.

The writer ought to be compensated for his wasted time thanks to their incompetence.

Thanks, I appreciate your comments today as I've been getting a little worried here that the traction this article is getting this morning is going to come back to bite me in the backside.

Whether it's Nintendo or a UK-local entity they sub-contract (it's a bit unclear - either way the address is store.nintendo.co.uk and Nintendo-branded), the policies could use some work.

In 2013, the absolutely terrible defamation laws in the UK were improved somewhat. Before then, you basically couldn't have said anything at all, publicly, about this absolutely shocking incident! IANAL, but now I understand they would have to show actual or probable loss of business because of your published statements. Given how much space you devote to saying how much you love their products and how great they are, I think this would be pretty difficult for them. To me, the tone of your article is overwhelmingly one of wanting to pressure them to fix their bad customer service, not one of wanting to harm their business in any way. Customers should have the right to shame agents of large international companies into reforming bad business practices, without fear of legal ramifications. Having lived in the UK, I feel like companies there regularly get away with murder, figuratively speaking, because of the poor consumer protections in that country.

From what I can see, you've stuck to the facts and been completely honest about the process - it's completely unfair that you should suffer any hardship as a result of it.

It's infuriating to see big corporations act like bullies behind their lawyers, and equally satisfying to see good people stand up to them.

The best thing Nintendo could do - and their senior managers have a window of opportunity here now - would be to deliver a huge apology to yourself personally, along with a promise to review their entire delivery system processes.

It's a great post, and Nintendo does indeed owe you.

But, at this point, I do recommend engaging counsel. As I understand it, truth is not a defense against slander under UK law.

Edit: I meant "libel", not "slander". Also, I was wrong about truth not being a defense. It's just that you need to prove the claims.

Don't be ridiculous, truth is a defence against Libel (written down is libel, not slander).

The onus is on the person who said the thing to prove it is true ("guilty until proven innocent," since it's a civil rather than criminal offence), but as long as he has documentation/emails it's all good.

Indeed, I would be astonished if they sued him for this, it would not end well for them.

Disclaimer: not a lawyer, but an election agent.

I don't recommend engaging council for this because it will cost you a fortune. And in the not unlikely event that you lose, you have to pay their costs as well. You have to ask yourself, "is this something worth spending my house on?"

By "engaging counsel", I didn't mean suing them. I meant getting professional advice regarding the situation.

That tends to involve less than a house, but still costs more than the Switch itself.

(I just got a quote this morning for a what I thought would be simply "explain my property deeds", and it came out at £500...)

So is there a UK equivalent of Nolo?

I'm not sure. There is a small claims court system, but we were talking about slander/libel in which case https://www.justanswer.com/uk-law/7bj5d-sue-someone-libel-sm...

I really would not recommend getting involved with libel law on a pro-se basis.

> truth is not a defense against slander under UK law.

It most certainly is. Defence #1, in fact.

It is a complete defence, but the burden of proof rests on the defendant.

Yes, that's what I meant.

Under US law, the burden of proof rests on the plaintiff.

Have you considered having the courier pick up the item at your workplace?

I hope he sends them an invoice in accordance with his standard hourly rate.

A pity that multinational companies can usually afford much better lawyers than the average Joe.

It's really not the same as threatening your neighbor with a "We'll see each other in court", for a parking lot dispute.

It's a bluff. Nintendo wouldn't involve lawyers over a Switch, it makes zero financial sense. What happened likely is some tech support drone made a threat, which the corporate never approved.

It make zero financial sense to send 3 switches. But here they are.

This itself is an interesting question. The foundations of the justice system talk about testing everyone equal in the eyes of law but somehow equal access to legal resources is never talked about. I think we need to think over this as a society. There are some countries like Germany where for people with low income the state pays money to hire a lawyer rather than providing a lawyer.

But that is also problematic. What if you have an average income, are part of middle class and have normal job. Now according to this system you are not poor so state won't provide lawyer to you. But hiring a lawyer to represent you against some ridiculous lawsuit by company with huge bankroll and lawyer company on retainer will ruin a person like this. You might have to sell your house just to afford it or something similar and this would financially ruin you and your middle class family.

> Now according to this system you are not poor so state won't provide lawyer to you.

I never said that is system is perfect. You can create mechanisms where you look at incomes and look at percentage of fees to be paid to a lawyer. Similar to how fines are calculated in some countries.

The larger point being made was the current system of representation of giving a public counsel definitely doesn't work. We need to move towards better systems.

I agree. Also law firms used by companies have massive resources (thousands of employees) so a regular person can't fight against a machine like that even if he/she can afford to hire a single lawyer. The system needs to be changed from ground up to give people better options to defend themselves.

> A pity that multinational companies can usually afford much better lawyers than the average Joe.

I'm always amazed at how afraid customers are of companies in the US/UK. Like this article, where they threaten legal action and make the customer responsible for being available to hand off the third Switch. As a customer in a western European country, I'd laugh straight in their face and wouldn't lose a second of sleep over threats like that. I may live in a country that has a weird and at times annoying obsession with rules and regulations, but when it comes to being a consumer, it's great.

The UK is a western European country, and still part of the EU (and therefore bound to its regulations).

Wouldn't a solution be either to:

Force both parties to pool resources, and hire legal help from that pool and no others. So if a large company sues an individual or small one, it pays a large percentage of the latter's legal costs.

Simply to ban private legal representation and have everyone represent themselves in court?

I'm sure large companies would act a bit more nicely if any court case meant the CEO had to personally leave the office and fight it out in court.

It is my understanding that if you win a case, you can request that the other party pay for some legal fees, within reasonable degrees, of course.

Banning private legal representation would be more likely to hurt everyday citizens, rather than CEOs. Large companies would just start to hire lawyers or equivalent as their CEOs. The law system is incredibly complex because our society is equally complex. This is why we train professionals for so many years, and expect them to take regular classes every year so their knowledge is kept up date.

I think it would be interesting to review outcomes of cases where a regular person or small company challenged a large company, as well as the inverse. Just how much power do large multinational companies have? I'd also expect more leniency to be shown to individuals and smaller companies acting in good faith. As I understand it, intent is a large factor in many cases.

Yea but a case like this doesn't need high-powered lawyers. Usually a high-street solicitor will write a letter outlining what's happened, objecting to the legal threat and asking for information on how to return the merchandise. All in all, it should cost ~£60.

£60 is a hell of a lot of money to buy nothing. He doesn't need to do any of that, just arrange to return the item and if Nintendo (or The Hut Group, which is sounds like) screw up the collection, it's their problem. Just keep records of all correspondence.

My understanding (IANAL) is, that's not the best strategy. If you have a complaint against a company, it is often the case that the company has an internal complaints procedure (usually a simple 9 step affair that only takes a year or two of constant, vigilant effort). If you don't follow it, you might actually find it very difficult to recover expenses for hastily employed legal services. You always have to ask yourself, who will most enjoy/benefit from/be able to afford engaging lawyers, you or the company's legal department?

Would it be a better alternative to threaten to take it to Twitter or to specialized press?

I've never done it, but I observed that contacting customer service on Twitter is usually very effective.

Very much so, in all the call centers I've worked in there was no "complaints department" we are just told to listen to the customer, relate with their concerns and tell them it will be "reviewed" by another department. In reality, it goes absolutely no where. Even if I 100% agreed with your complaint, I have no place to record it or know who it's supposed to go to to get further up the ladder. Some managers will accept your complaint, put it on their desk, then throw it out. If you been employed long enough the managers wont even accept it, cause honestly I don't think they have anyone to pass it up the chain to that would actually accept it.

Best way to go is social media, companies have "Social Media Experts" that are employed solely for online damage control.

Another way to get something done is by sending a plain snail mail letter addressed to someone high-up at the company in question. You have to figure that out yourself as if you call the call center, the reps are never allowed to give out that information or they are told to tell you a fake address/fake person or the general C/O Complaints Department. Those go to no one at all and directly to the garbage.

Now if you successfully send a written complaint letter to someone high up, everyone knows about it, cause the internal police come to investigate if anyone at the call center gave out that information (It's a huge deal and grounds to be fired).

Another thing, youtube clips, if you are recording and posting on youtube your conversation with a rep, the company has a team to watch for that stuff. Once they find you doing that, you then become a "Flagged Customer" and we prepare while we leave you on hold, get one of the better reps available and have 2-3 other managers listening in on the line guiding the rep through the call step by step.

That's very interesting, thanks for sharing your experience.

Re: youtube clips. I don't do that, but when I call a customer service to complain and ask for a change that I know will not be well received (e.g. cancel cable) I always start the conversation by saying that I am recording the conversation on my side. And to "confirm" what you wrote, it's not unusual that after exposing my problem/demand I'm put on hold for 5/10 minutes while the employee is fetching the "domain expert to help with my problem".

Companies don't like it when you air out their dirty laundry.

I'd say being able to speak openly about a company is one of the few ways regular people have a chance of standing up to multinational corporations.

Specialised press would probably work well. Send the story to a few gaming news sites, post it on some Nintendo subreddits and the guy's situation may improve at least a bit.

I dont "have a lawyer", and am not sure what people mean with "my" in phrases such as "talk to my lawyer".

In the situation you describe, how would I go about finding a lawyer to receive communication and how much would it cost me out of pocket to simply be allowed to use their name and address when telling nintendo "talk with these guys, their my lawyers"

Interesting suggestion.

Have you tried this? What were the results?

yeah, I'm sure Nintendo would be scared of losing some pocket change battling one guy and his budget lawyer.