Fighting for your money back when your standards are higher than everyone else’s

Thursday, 1 January 2026

When you’re heading off to a bach, there’s nothing worse than arriving to find it is disappointingly different to the advertising photos.

From a greenstone boulder with fractures that rendered it uncarveable, to a less-than-firm mattress, and a “unclean and overpriced” holiday home; 2025 was another year in which Disputes Tribunal referees were called on to judge the slippery concept of what is acceptable quality for goods and services.

And sometimes, those with higher standards found themselves on the wrong side of decisions.

That happened in the case of a woman who booked a $500-a-night holiday home only to turn up to find the advertising photos of the home had made it look nicer than it was in reality.

She considered the advertising photos she had seen were misleading, making the place appear larger, and nicer than it really was, and refused to stay there, “cancelling” her contract.

She demanded her $1000 back, and the bach owner refunded $433, but the woman applied to the Disputes Tribunal, which hears small money disputes of up to $30,000 (soon to rise to $60,000), for the balance of her cash back.

Tribunal referee K Cowie was hampered in coming to a decision. The claimant failed to provide the photographic evidence needed to decide whether the advertising photos were misleading.

But more fatally to the woman’s case, the Consumer Guarantees Act, under which the concept of “acceptable” quality is enshrined in law, requires providers of goods and services be given a chance to fix issues with them, when someone complains.

The woman had not given the bach owner the chance to fix the problem by rushing cleaners round to spruce it up, Cowie found.

The woman was bound by the contract she had entered, and it was not up to the tribunal to decide whether the woman had “received adequate value for money”, Cowie said.

Having higher standards can put people beyond the legal definition of acceptable quality, as one pounamu greenstone carver discovered.

He bought a 3.46kg piece of greenstone from an online dealer.

But when it arrived, he found it had micro-fractures which were not visible in the listing photos and demanded his money back.

Tribunal referee Erica Boscato said the Consumer Guarantees Act provides that where goods are supplied to a consumer, there is a guarantee that the goods will be of acceptable quality.

Some pounamu carvers make simple designs, while others require micro-fracture free greenstone to make intricate carvings.

The 3.46kg chunk was of acceptable quality to carve simple shapes, but the carver intended much more intricate carvings.

However, Boscato said: “The Consumer Guarantees Act only requires that goods are fit for common purposes, and does not require goods to be fit for a consumer’s particular purpose unless the consumer makes known that particular purpose to the supplier.”

The carver had not done this, she said.

“In this instance, the goods are stone: a natural resource which a reasonable consumer would expect to contain imperfections,” she said.

Acceptable quality faces a big challenge in the age of people buying things online without being able to see and feel them first.

One of the 2025 tribunal cases on acceptable quality involved a product bought online that once nobody would have considered buying without getting to lie on it first: a mattress.

There are risks to buying cheap mattresses online, including that it may not be good enough to give you a good night’s sleep.

A woman bought a king-size mattress online from a company for the low price of $549 plus $109 shipping.

She had a sore back and needed to replace a sagging old mattress.

But after three months of sleeping on her untried mattress, she concluded it was not “firm” and not of acceptable quality.

“She noticed the mattress was sagging where the pressure points from her shoulders and hips contacted the mattress, and her back had started to become sore,” tribunal referee W Lang said. “She turned the mattress but says both sides of the mattress were sagging, while the middle remained firm. She says she bought it as it was listed as a firm mattress, but that it deteriorated quickly and became much softer.”

But was it of acceptable quality?

Lang decided the woman had paid a price that was “at the lower end” of the mattress market, and did not order the company to pay the woman her money back.