Refusing to refund for sensors that do not work - LeddarTech

Hey guys, I am facing some difficulties with LeddarTech (http://leddartech.com) and would like to seek some advice here. Here are the chronology of events.

12 April 2016 – Purchased 2x LeddarOne Sensor Modules at about US$350.

19 April 2016 – Received the sensors and started trying to get them to work on the ROS platform. Thereafter numerous emails (more than 20 of them) were bounced with their technical support team. We then realised that our sensors could not even work properly on the SDKs provided by the company as the connection was unstable and dropped a few seconds after switching the sensor on.

26 April 2016 – Requested for a refund from their Sales Director, who replied 2 days later that the company will not be able to refund due to company policies.

4 May 2016 – Escalated the issue to the company’s management team. Got a reply 3 days later from the VP of Sales who then offered to make a refund, which we agreed to. This was the last time we handled the sensors and it could still powered up, albeit the unstable connection that we encountered all along.

13 May 2016 – Sent the units back to the company with their courier picking up the units from my place.

31 May 2016 – Got a response from the company, having well received the package. However, the VP of Sales claims the units sent back are not functional on their end, and thus they will not be reimbursing the units. The issue is my team could not get the sensors to function properly in the first place. Before sending back the items, LeddarTech also indicated that we will not have to bear any costs under any situation. After this response, I have since emailed them 4 times for clarification, some of which were also escalated to the CEO, but am not getting a reply from them.

I am at a loss of what to do. The amount spent is quite substantial for me as I do not have any income yet and purchased these for a side project while doing my undergraduate studies. Could anyone advise what else I can do in this circumstances?

Small claims court.

Hi darrellg, thing is, I am based in Singapore, while LeddarTech is a Canadian company. Anyone knows what the best approach would be if I choose to take the legal route?

You are probably out of luck, as the legal route will undoubtedly cost you much more than the product. Mark it up as a learning experience.

But thanks for the warning about the company.

FWIW, I’ve been using the Lidar-Lite from PulsedLight and I’m impressed. They’ve been bought out by Garmin, but when they are back on the market again, definitely worth a look.

Yes, the Lidar-Lite has excellent performance and is reasonably priced. I use two of them, one of which I won in a drawing last summer at the SparkFun autonomous vehicle contest! Thanks, SFE!