Consumer rights “non-stock” items

Same with Invisiframe, they have a bunch of templates for the most common bikes and then cut to order. How popular does the bike have to be in order for it not to be called “custom” and who regulates this?
Sounds fair enough to me to treat it all as personalised.

If they’ve got the template then it’s not custom. It would be custom if it weren’t explicitly listed on their website, and, for example, you sent them a template to cut. Fair enough and the law are two different things.

https://www.gov.uk/online-and-distance-selling-for-businesses

Linked from the the source quoted above is https://www.gov.uk/accepting-returns-and-giving-refunds

Here’s what that says:

You have to offer a refund for certain items only if they’re faulty, such as:

personalised items and custom-made items, for example curtains
perishable items, for example frozen food or flowers
newspapers and magazines
unwrapped CDs, DVDs and computer software

Seems clear to me – you wouldn’t expect curtains where you’d supplied the exact dimensions to be refunded. If you bought a standard size, you would.

And back to the OP – he clearly didn’t specify anything custom (eg a colour Pantone) so should be refunded. It’s really not our problem how or when this stuff is manufactured.

FFS. 502 Error.

I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with the public. We are awful

Really?

OP was quite reasonable in his expectations and the retailer was clearly trying to pull a fast one, having dropped a clanger by ordering a load of cosmetically unappealing stock that they’re probably struggling to shift… IMO.

From what I gather (from a video on Youtube somewhere – think it was Pinned) Unite are essentially using Cerakote as a method to reduce inventory to a fraction of what it would need to be when outsourcing anodising of parts.

So potentially thousands of parts down to literally tens if they are cerakoting parts to order.

The ‘no returns’ looks like an extension of this model – e.g. they don’t want the stuff back because they don’t want to stock anything, it could be months until they sell that colour / part combo again as there is so much choice.

I think the calling a single-colour item ‘custom’ is stretching reality a little and probably not technically allowed – custom splash etc, sure but this isn’t that.

Its telling that there seems to be quite a bit of Unite stuff for sale on Ebay / Facebook unfitted / unused, probably because people weren’t a fan of the finish and were refused a refund.

Ill echo what many other people have said – moving to cerakote seems like an absolute disaster when their parts before were really rather nice when anodised – it looks horrible (imo) and seems like it chips off on items like pedals, I cant imagine the saving in inventory has outweighed the obvious drop in sales they must have experienced here, there’s a reason hardly anyone else uses it.

When they announced Cerakote, it was one of those raised eyebrow moments when a company you like does something you think might ultimately break them.

Returned my “silver” (dirty grey Cerakote) pedals to a retailer, and managed to track down what might have been the last anodised silver ones in the country as a replacement.