[nick101]

Just as a point of information - the Trades Descriptions Act and the Sales of Goods Act apply to the seller , not the manufacturer. So once again, as many have said, it would be Waterstones who'd be liable. In this case, if W's said that the device had 100 books pre-loaded and it didn't, that's a breach and they'd be liable.

But, under the TDA/SLA, their obligation is to repair, or if that's not possible, to replace, or if that's not possible, to refund.

Repair would mean, as Solicitous said, loading the books for the customer. Which would be hard if the customer was ranting that the reader was junk and that Sony were spawn of the devil and so on. And even harder if said ranting wasn't actually in a branch of W's where someone could deal with the problem

Another approach is to accept the possibility that, shop staff being human and all, they will exhibit the normal range of human foibles, including that of making the occasional mistake. To which a common remedy is an apology, which is often sufficient for those of us that recognise that, especially in the run-up to Christmas, shop working is not a chi-centring laid-back business