Refund, Return and Cancellation Policy

Three things go wrong on the paperwork side of a repair more often than anything else: a visit has to be called off, a part has to go back, or a repair we finished has not held. Below is what Universal Appliance does in each case, what the service call fee is actually paying for, and how a refund is handled. The rules read the same whichever way the job reached us – a phone call, the form on universal-appliances.com, or the online scheduler.

1. When to read this page

Four situations. You need to move or cancel an appointment. You want to know what you are paying for when a technician turns up. You are asking for money back, or want to return a part. Or you believe a repair we carried out has come undone.

2. Cancelling an appointment, or moving it

Nothing is charged for calling off a visit or shifting it to another day, provided you reach us before the van sets out. (201) 000-0000 is the number, and the more warning we get the better, because somebody else is usually waiting on that slot.

There is one exception. Where the technician gets to your address inside the agreed window and cannot reach the appliance – no answer at the door, the way blocked, or nobody there over 18 – a trip charge equal to the service call fee may go on the bill.

3. What the service call fee pays for

It pays for three things that happen whether or not a repair follows: the drive to your address, the time the technician spends with the machine, and the testing he does on it. None of that can be undone afterward, so the fee is non-refundable after a completed visit.

Give the recommended repair the go-ahead, though, and that same sum stops being a separate line on your invoice. It is folded into the repair price instead.

4. What stands behind a repair we finished

You cannot carry a repaired refrigerator back to a counter the way you would return a toaster. What takes the place of that is a written guarantee:

• Should the same problem come back within 30 days, we send somebody out again and the labor on that visit is free.
• If a part we installed lets go inside 30 days, or inside whatever longer period its own maker warrants it for, you pay nothing for the replacement.
• Where a second visit still does not resolve the original trouble, the labor billed on the first repair is refunded.

Return visits under this guarantee go into ordinary working hours. Only the customer on the original invoice can open a claim, and we ask for that invoice, or the job number from it, before the return is booked.

5. What the guarantee does not reach

• A different problem altogether, or another part giving out later on.
• Mistreatment, a surge on the line, water damage, vermin, or running a machine after we told you to switch it off.
• Anything a third party did to the appliance after our technician left.
• Items with a finite life in normal use: belts, hoses, gaskets, filters, bulbs.
• A machine we told you at the time of service was not worth repairing.

6. Parts and returns

Special orders. When a part is brought in for one specific machine it cannot be sent back and it cannot be refunded. Our own supplier will not take it from us, so we cannot take it from you. A deposit against such an order becomes non-refundable as soon as the order goes through.

A part that arrives dead. If a part does not work when it is first fitted, or fails within the warranty term its manufacturer puts on it, we swap it and there is nothing to pay.

Counter sales, never installed. Unopened, still in its seal, with the receipt: bring it back within 14 days and we will accept the return. Restocking may be held back, up to 20%. Circuit boards, anything electrical, and anything we sourced to order cannot come back once the box has been broken into.

7. When replacing beats repairing

Some diagnoses end with a recommendation to put the money into a new machine, because the parts bill would run past what the appliance is worth. In that case the invoice stops at the service call fee, and you get the arithmetic behind that verdict in words you can check for yourself.

8. Asking for a refund or opening a claim

• Phone (201) 000-0000, or set it out in an email to info@universal-appliances.com.
• Have three things ready: the number off the invoice, the model as it reads on the rating plate, and the date the technician came out.
• Describe how the machine behaves now, and how that differs from the day the work was finished.

An acknowledgement reaches you within 2 business days, and we aim to close the matter inside 10 business days. A refund we approve goes back the way the payment came in, and the bank at the far end normally needs a further 5 to 10 business days before it shows on your statement.

9. Before you call your card company

Talk to us first. A formal dispute runs for weeks and tends to finish exactly where a five-minute phone call would have finished, and what interests us is getting the machine working rather than winning an argument about it. If something genuinely cannot be settled between the two of us, the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs accepts consumer complaints about this trade.

10. Company details

Universal Appliance, Paramus, NJ. Phone (201) 000-0000, email info@universal-appliances.com.
Calls are taken twelve hours a day, weekends and holidays included.