Aspiring lawyer claims she found 74 mistakes in the £40.99 textbook
A Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) student has claimed she was denied a refund on a law revision guide she bought for £40.99 even though it was “riddled with errors”.
Sharing her textbook-induced anger with the Legal Cheek team, the student claimed the YourGDL book — which was written by University of Law GDL students — was “full of spelling and grammar mistakes”. The aspiring solicitor — who has secured a training contract with a corporate law firm — went as far as to say she’d identified 74 errors in the book “from a brief skim read” alone.
However, when our anonymous student contacted the YourGDL team, which describes its notes as “fully accurate and comprehensive” on its website, she wasn’t pleased with the response. She was told she was not entitled to a refund, but was instead offered an “editing fee” of £1 per error of law and 20p per typo.
The customer was also disappointed when YourGDL told her it encourages students to check that the content of the notes is correct. She was also informed the book contains authors’ opinions on how to approach GDL questions, something the student claims she wasn’t aware of at the time of purchase.
When we put these accusations to YourGDL, this is what it told us:
This customer’s complaint wasn’t handled in a very sensitive way, for which we apologise, and we’ll aim to do better next time. We are always grateful when students point out any typos that pop up in a book, even small formatting points and we are also hiring an editor for this year, if you have any interested readers.
Declining to comment on the refund situation, the spokesperson added:
Customers are free to send books back to us up to 14 days from delivery for a refund if they are not happy with them for any reason. What’s more, any customer who doesn’t get at least a commendation at the end of the year can rely on our commendation guarantee for a refund (see our website for details).
So it seems forsaking a commendation may be our aggrieved law student’s only chance to be reunited with her £40.99.