# Consumer Complaint for Refund: Wrong Machine Delivered > Delivered the wrong water purifier and the company won't refund? Here's how a consumer complaint for refund works, where to file, and what proof you need. Source: https://sudhirrao.com/insights/consumer-complaint-for-refund-wrong-machine-delivered Author: Sudhir Rao — Advocate, Supreme Court of India Category: Consumer Court Published: 2026-09-19 --- #### One of my clients recently had a case which I am explaining below and if you are stuck in such similar situation, here is what to do. **Note:** Due to attorney-client privilege, I cannot disclose complete case details or identify the actual parties involved. However, I am sharing the essential facts and legal approach so that if you find yourself in a similar situation, you can understand the available solutions and legal remedies. **TL;DR:** When a company delivers a machine you never ordered and then stalls on the refund, that is a deficiency in service, and you can file a consumer complaint for refund before the District Consumer Commission within two years. The National Consumer Helpline is a grievance platform, not a court, so use it to build a record but don't treat it as your remedy. Get every oral promise of a refund confirmed in writing, and never hand the wrong machine back without a signed pickup receipt. # Where Do You File a Consumer Complaint for Refund of Money Paid? She paid the full amount upfront. That was on 12 July 2025. The machine came two days later, and on 17 July a company technician opened the carton in her Pune flat while she watched. Inside sat an old, worn Pureit unit. Not the Aquaguard model she had ordered. The technician said so himself, out loud, before he left. Meera Nair emailed the company that same evening. What followed was four weeks of the same question, asked a different way each time: do you have a video of the unboxing? She didn't. She had been travelling and hadn't thought to record it. In early August the company cancelled the service and promised a full refund. Then its pickup executive refused to collect the unit, saying it belonged to another brand and wasn't theirs to take. On 9 September she called twice. One agent told her this sort of thing happens. An escalation agent went straight back to asking for the video. By then she had spent a month chasing phone numbers. The Chamber of Advocate Sudhir Rao took the file, and the approach shifted from calls to a documented, written complaint with the payment trail and the email thread attached. Advocate Sudhir Rao's experience in consumer disputes helped secure relief in the client's favour. # Key Facts of the Case - Full payment made upfront on 12 July 2025; delivery on 14 July 2025. - The company's own technician unboxed the unit on 17 July 2025 and confirmed the wrong machine had been sent. - The unit delivered was a different brand's older model, not the model ordered. - A written complaint by email went out on the same day as the unboxing. - No unboxing video exists. The client's account rests on the technician's presence, not on footage. - Service was cancelled and a full refund promised in early August 2025, but only over the phone. - The pickup executive refused to collect the machine, and no pickup record was ever created. - As of 9 September 2025 there was no refund, and the wrong machine was still sitting in her home. # The Direct Legal Answer There is a remedy, and it is not another phone call. A seller who takes your money, sends something you did not order, refuses to take it back and then sits on the refund has committed a **deficiency in service**. That phrase comes from the definition in section 2(11) of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, and it is exactly what a District Consumer Commission exists to deal with. Three routes sit side by side when money is stuck like this. They are not alternatives you pick once and abandon; you can run the first and keep the others in reserve. - **Consumer complaint under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019** — the practical route. Cheap, fast by Indian litigation standards, and it can order a refund directly against the seller. - **Chargeback through your bank or card issuer** — only if you paid by card, net banking or a payment gateway. These have internal deadlines measured in weeks, not years, and once they lapse the window is gone. - **A civil suit for recovery of the amount** — available, but slower, and it carries ad valorem court fees on the sum claimed. There is no good reason to go there first. A police complaint for cheating is a fourth possibility and the one people reach for most often. It rarely works here. The cheating provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 require dishonest intention at the time of the transaction, and a sale that goes wrong after payment does not usually establish that. Wrong delivery looks like a botched sale, not a fraud, and police are entitled to say so. If there is something more — a fake invoice, a serial number scratched off, a seller who has done this to a dozen buyers — the picture changes and it is worth raising separately. What a commission can order, if the complaint succeeds, is set out in section 39. Refund of the price paid. Replacement with the correct goods. Compensation for loss or injury. Litigation costs. Commissions have also awarded sums for mental agony and for the time wasted chasing a seller who had already admitted the mistake, though the amount depends entirely on the facts and on the member hearing the matter. ## Where do you file a consumer complaint for refund of money paid? Two questions decide this: how much the goods were worth, and where the parties are. Both are governed by section 34. ### Which commission — the money test The jurisdiction is fixed by the *consideration paid*, not by the value of the claim you write in your complaint. As the limits currently stand: - District Commission — consideration up to ₹50 lakh. - State Commission — above ₹50 lakh and up to ₹2 crore. - National Commission — above ₹2 crore. These slabs were revised by notification and are not the numbers you will find in older copies of the Act or in blog posts written before 2022. For a household appliance, the District Commission is where the complaint goes. ### Which district — the place test Four places will usually work, and you can choose: - Where the opposite party actually or voluntarily resides, or carries on business, or has a branch office. - Where the opposite party personally works for gain. - Where the cause of action arose — for a delivery dispute, that is often your own city, because that is where the wrong machine was delivered and where the money was received. - Where the complainant resides or personally works for gain. Pick wrongly and you lose weeks to a return of the complaint plus a fresh filing, so confirm this before you draft anything. ### When did the cause of action arise? The clock starts when the seller's obligation to refund was breached. Not when you first called. Not when you sent the first angry email. Practically, commissions look at the date the refund was promised and not paid, or the date it was flatly refused. In her case that is early August 2025, when service was cancelled and the refund was assured on a recorded call. The complaint has to be filed within **two years** of that date, under section 69 of the Act. A late complaint can still be entertained if you show sufficient cause for the delay, but that is a gamble on a member's discretion, not a plan. ## Can the National Consumer Helpline get your refund back? No. And this is where a lot of people lose a month. The National Consumer Helpline, and its app, is a grievance-routing platform run by the government. You log a grievance, the company is asked to respond, and sometimes it does — because a refund is cheaper than the paperwork. That is a genuine benefit. A company that ignores the helpline has now built you a clean record: date of grievance, date of company response or silence, escalation reference number. What the helpline cannot do is order anybody to pay you. It has no power to pass a direction. If the seller is stalling, the helpline will keep saying "under process" and your two years will keep running. Treat it as evidence-gathering, not as your remedy. ## What to do, in order - **Stop calling.** Put everything in one written email, with the invoice number, the payment reference and the model you actually ordered. - **Ask one direct question.** "Confirm in writing the date on which the refund will be credited and the pickup date for the wrongly delivered unit." - **Photograph the machine.** The full unit, the model and serial number label, the carton, the invoice. Do this today, in daylight, before anyone collects it. - **Send a legal notice.** Not mandatory, but it draws a line and usually produces either the money or a clear refusal — which is exactly what the Commission needs to see. - **File.** Before the District Commission in the district where you live or where the delivery happened, through e-Daakhil or at the Commission's filing counter. ### What goes in the complaint - Invoice and proof of payment — bank statement, card statement or UPI reference. - Delivery document, and the technician's visit if there is any record of it. - The full email thread, printed chronologically, not screenshots scattered across pages. - The written refund promise, if you managed to get one. If it was only oral, say so and name the date. - Photographs of the unit and of the model number label. - Your call log, if you want to show how often you chased. - A short, dated narrative — one page, no adjectives. Court fee is small and is set by the 2020 Rules, scaled to the consideration paid. The exact slab changes; check the current figure on the e-Daakhil portal before you pay. For a consumer claim of this size it is a few hundred rupees, not lakhs. That is the whole point of the forum. ### What happens after filing The Commission decides whether to admit the complaint, ordinarily within about three weeks. If admitted, notice goes to the seller, who usually gets thirty days to reply. If the seller does not appear, the Commission can hear the matter ex parte and decide on your evidence. If they do appear — and a company with a legal department usually will — expect written versions, a possible application for a different forum, and adjournments. That is the slow part. A straightforward refund matter can take several months to a couple of years depending on the Commission's docket. What you can ask for, if you succeed: refund of the amount paid, replacement with the correct model, interest on the money that sat with the seller, compensation for the harassment, and costs. Compensation figures vary wildly between Commissions, and nobody can promise you a number. ## Three ways people wreck a good case ### 1. Handing the machine back without paper This is the one that hurts. If a pickup person turns up and takes the wrong unit with nothing signed, you have lost your best exhibit. No machine to show, no record of what left your house, and the seller can later say the correct model was delivered and returned in good condition. Hand it over only against a signed receipt that names the model, the serial number and the date — and photograph the receipt before the van leaves. ### 2. Accepting a refund promise over the phone An agent's assurance has no value in a complaint. Send an email the same day: "As discussed on this call at 4.15 pm, you have confirmed a full refund by the 20th." Two lines. If they reply confirming it, you have a written admission. If they go silent, you have a record of your own contemporaneous account, which is better than nothing and much better than memory. ### 3. Waiting for the company to "sort it out internally" Every month you wait weakens photographs, loses the technician's name from your memory, lets the chargeback window expire, and eats into limitation. A written notice costs you one evening. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### I paid by UPI. Can I still file? Yes. The remedy under the Consumer Protection Act does not depend on how you paid. What changes is the parallel option: card and net-banking payments may qualify for a chargeback through the issuer, and those have internal deadlines measured in weeks. If you want to try that route, do it immediately, and keep the consumer complaint running alongside it. ### Can I claim interest on top of the refund? You can ask for it, and commissions do award interest on amounts wrongly retained. It is not automatic and the rate is at the Commission's discretion. Plead it specifically with the date from which you want it — usually the date the refund fell due. ### Do I need a lawyer for the District Commission? You are entitled to appear yourself. But a company served with notice will often send a representative, and the pleadings are where these cases are won or lost. If the amount is small, filing on your own with a clean set of documents is a perfectly reasonable choice. ### What if they send the correct model now? Then your relief changes. If you accept the replacement, the refund claim goes, and what remains is compensation for the delay and the money you spent chasing them. Decide whether you still want the machine at all before they deliver it, and say so in writing. ### Can I file a police complaint instead? You can, but wrong delivery after payment usually reads as a botched sale, not cheating. Where a seller had no intention of supplying the goods at all — a fake invoice, a serial number filed off, other buyers with the same story — the cheating provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 come into play and it is worth pressing. Where the seller genuinely shipped the wrong box, the police are entitled to say it is a civil dispute, and filing an FIR may simply add a year and no money. ## The part that is still unresolved Meera's money is yet to come back. The complaint puts a fixed claim on record and stops the seller from quietly declaring the matter closed, but it does not make anyone pay by Friday. What she has now that she did not have in July is a documented refusal, photographs of the unit sitting in her flat, and a forum that can order what the call centre would not. If you are in the same position, send the invoice, the payment proof, the email thread, the legal notice if you sent one, and a two-line note on what you want — refund, replacement or both. Email **me@sudhirrao.com** or use the [contact page](/contact-us). If you have the papers ready to file, [book a slot](/book) and bring the originals. *This article is general information about Indian law and is not legal advice on your own situation. Every complaint turns on its own facts and on which Commission hears it.* *Advocate Sudhir Rao, Supreme Court of India* --- _This is the AI-readable Markdown version of an article published by the Chambers of Sudhir Rao. It is general legal information, not legal advice. Canonical page: https://sudhirrao.com/insights/consumer-complaint-for-refund-wrong-machine-delivered_