Question:
Because my wife has a bad back the Doc advised to buy an exercise bike. We found one selling for 400 shek. We tried it out and was good. The computer part of the bike wasn’t working (the part which tells you time spent, calaries, speed etc). The lady selling it said its fine, just needs new batteries. We thought fine. We paid 400 shek. We got it home (that cost us 50shek) and replaced the batteries and it still didn’t work. We phoned the woman who said she really thought it was just the batteries and she never knew. She said (correctly) that the bike still works and is usuable without the computer part. This is true because it is possible still to cycle and do exercise with the bike without the feed back of the computer. You can also manually adjust the gears of the bike without the computer. She offered us to give us back 200 shek and we can keep the half working bike. My wife feels (and the Doc said) that the computer part is very important for feedback for her progress, but we decided it was worth it to take it for 200 shek. I have not collected the money from her. I myself decided out of curiousity to open up the computer part and see if there were any loose wires etc that I could fix. I opened it up undoing many screws and detatching the circuit. I fiddled around a bit (nothing major) and it started to work. I didn’t do a professional job because I can’t, but it I did fix it. The sheila is can I still collect the money?
My addition: She was not a frum woman.I I have a bit of a suspicion that she knew. (I don’t know for sure). She said they haven’t used the bike for a few years but when they used it and it stopped working the phoned the company who said it must be the batteries. Now in my opinion why didnt’ she just change them? She obviously knew there was a problem otherwise why phone the company, and after they answered her that why didn’t she listen and change them.
Also I am not sure it is fixed properly. I feel that it could stop working any moment, because looking inside the computer part it didn’t look very solid. I didn’t even replace all the screws that I unscrewed from there, because it upon replacing a few it started working and I just thought leave it while it is working!
Answer:
You can receive the money, because the bike wasn’t worth more when you bought it. If it had been worth more, there might have been a problem of אונאה.
