Some time back I bought some chess software called Pocket Fritz 2
developed a company called Chessbase in Germany.

http://www.chessbase.com/shop/product.asp?pid=152

I purchased it in England. This runs on a handhold personal digital
assistant (PDA). As you might guess, the software can play you a game of
chess. But it should be able to do more than just this. The web page
describing the product also says:

"The program gives you mobile access to the ChessBase Online database
with well over two million games. There you can search for the games of
specific players, tournaments or openings." (Openings are the first
10-15 moves of a game of chess)

This feature requires you have an Internet connection to the PDA and so
the PDA then connects to Chessbase's database.

This feature was as far as I was concerned one of the main features of
the program. There are lots of chess programs which can play chess, but
Pocket Fritz 2 was the only one to have this feature.

I assume Chessbase, the developers of the software, have made changes to
their database or web server, since at least part of the functionality
has been reduced. It is no longer possible to search for specific
opening. It used to work, but now does not. The software on the PDA has
not changed - Chessbase have introduced some bug into their online
database.

Chessbase admit the fault exists, and have known about it for several
months, but have told me in an email that fixing it is not a high priority.

Unfortunately, I bought the software 2 to 3 years ago, but if it had
been purchased recently (how recently?), would this be a good enough
reason to get a refund of the purchase price? Or could the retailer
and/or Chessbase argue that all non-trivial software has bugs, and so
refuse to do so?

I believe there are some extra rights one has if paying by a credit
card. Would these help?

I'm almost tempted to buy a second copy just for the hell of it. If
nothing else, it will irritate the retailer to have to give a refund
under such circumstances. They might then put pressure on the developers
to fix the online database they have screwed up.

--
Dave (from the UK)

Please note my email address changes periodically to avoid spam.
It is always of the form:
Hitting reply will work for a few months only - later set it manually.

http://witm.sourceforge.net/ (Web based Mathematica front end)