Noida: District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission has ordered Reliance Digital to refund Rs 49,990 — the cost of an LED TV purchased in 2018 that repeatedly malfunctioned — along with a fine of Rs 2,000.Commission president Anil Kumar Pundir and member Anju Sharma passed the order on Monday, directing the company to pay the amount within 30 days along with 6% annual interest calculated from Aug 20, 2020, when the complaint was registered.The case was filed by Vishal Dixit, a Sector 122 resident, against a Reliance Digital outlet in the city. Dixit told the commission that he bought a smart LED TV on Nov 21, 2018, for Rs 49,990 after being told it came equipped with YouTube, computer and Android features. Within days, YouTube stopped working and the set began overheating. When he called customer care, a representative visited, rebooted the TV and declared it functional — but the problems persisted.Reliance Digital, in its defence, said the TV was a ReConnect-brand product serviced by a third party, and that the company was not its manufacturer. It claimed an engineer had visited promptly, found the unit defective on arrival and replaced it with an identical model. When YouTube again failed to work on the replacement, the engineer offered a firmware update, which Dixit refused. The company alleged the complaint was filed to harass them.The commission rejected this argument. Noting that the TV had malfunctioned repeatedly despite being a new product, it questioned why a consumer would refuse a firmware update on a TV that was working properly. It also found that Reliance Digital had produced no documentary evidence — no repair records, no service receipts, no proof that the firmware update would have resolved the issue.“The complainant has provided all the evidence to prove that the LED was repeatedly malfunctioning, while the defendant has failed to provide any evidence showing that the defendant demonstrated deficiency in service,” the commission ruled, ordering the refund and fine.
