📦 Sharing this story to hear what people in Norway think: Do consumers have any rights when the postal service makes a mistake?
An elderly refugee woman recently bought a perfume from KICKS.no. She prepaid, but decided to return the item – still sealed – and brought it the same day to Posten (Rema 1000 desk).
The item was a small box. She gave the correct return address to KICKS. The Posten worker accepted it, charged her 106 NOK, and gave her a receipt. But nobody told her that it would be treated as a “regular letter” – meaning no tracking.
Weeks later, KICKS refused to refund her, saying “there’s no tracking code.” Posten, on the other hand, says the item was sent but can’t prove delivery because it was registered as an untracked letter.
So she is now left with no perfume, no refund – and no one taking responsibility.
She acted in good faith, had a receipt, and trusted the postal worker would process it correctly. Is it fair to blame a customer in this case?
📎 We’re attaching the receipt. What do you think?
– Can KICKS legally refuse refund when return is documented?
– Shouldn't Posten have warned her that the package was being sent without tracking?
– What options are there in such cases?
Looking forward to your thoughts.
by Key-Ad-4259
4 comments
I don’t know the case you are referring to, but shouldn’t she contact the seller (KICKS) for information of their return policy and not just mail it back?
Consumer protections in general are strong in Norway, but you are not protected from doing what you think is right without knowing and expecting others to fix it for you. Why is it relevant to the case that she’s an elderly refugee? You mention that you perceive this as a mistake by the postal service, but the way you put it makes it appear that the mistake was made by the consumer. Now she hopefully has leaned to follow return policies and won’t make similar mistakes again.
I dont think Kicks is asking for the tracking code from posten, but which order number the perfume initially was?
Generally in Norway, people think they are more protected by the government than they actually are.
For example, you have a legal notice sent to you by post with a strict response deadline. The law often says that the deadline starts when it is sent, with no allowance for Posten service time. However, Posten terms and conditions also say that they take no responsibility for delays. Only if there is payment for an express service will they refund the payment, but there is no compensation for any consequences.
Similarly, Altinn is in theory a great idea for faster communication and you get notified when messages come in. But you don’t get to choose the SMS/e-post – the sender does – and there is no allowance for failure of the notification mechanism because the designers of Norwegian systems do not know about handling errors/exceptions. So again, legally consequential messages don’t get through but the government says it is your problem.
In this case though, I don’t think it was Posten’s fault if she didn’t say she wanted tracking. It is their fault that they lost it, but they will take no responsibility as usual.
Did she include the return form / order number in the package?
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