PrepTest 129, Section 3, Question 17
Consumer: If you buy a watch at a(67 more words not shown)
The consumer's argument relies on(3 more words not shown)
- Aone should not(18 more words not shown)
- Ba watch bought(38 more words not shown)
- Ca seller should(22 more words not shown)
- Dthe consumer did(17 more words not shown)
- Ethe watch that(11 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
A watch that stops working the day after purchase sounds like a reasonable candidate for a refund, especially if the buyer used it normally. But keep the conditions attached to the rule: purchase at a department store, intended use, and failure the next day.
The consumer establishes the next-day failure. What about the other parts? Bingham's is expressly not a department store, so applying the same standard there needs a connection. And did the consumer use the watch as intended? If someone used a watch as a hammer, its breaking the next day would not establish the ordinary-use condition.
What we’re looking for
Those are two distinct gaps. For the required-assumption question, I'd expect either a connection extending the standard to Bingham's or the missing fact that this consumer used the watch properly. We don't need an answer repairing every issue at once, but we do need something this particular reasoning relies on.
Working the answers
- A
This concerns when selling a product is appropriate. The conclusion concerns whether the buyer should receive a refund after the sale. The seller could have reasonably expected the watch to work, yet the consumer could still claim a refund when it unexpectedly fails. A does not establish a requirement of the refund argument.
- B
The watches could have different expected lifespans and still fall under the same next-day refund standard. A jewelry-store watch expected to last decades and a department-store watch expected to last only a few years could both reasonably be refunded after failing immediately. The consumer does not need equal long-term durability.
- C
This replaces the stated standard with a much broader rule about every product and every disappointed expectation. A purchaser could expect a watch to do something it was never designed to do; the consumer's argument does not require refunds for that disappointment. We need an assumption behind the given proper-use, next-day standard, not a new rule that would grant many additional refunds.
- DCorrect
The consumer did not misuse the watch. That supplies the intended-use condition in the standard the consumer invokes. Without it, next-day failure alone would not put the purchase within that standard: our watch-used-as-a-hammer example shows why.
This does not resolve the separate question of applying a department-store standard to Bingham's. An argument can depend on more than one assumption, and D identifies one of them.
- E
Nothing in the stated standard distinguishes new watches from used watches. The consumer could be making the same argument about a new watch that failed the next day. The reasoning therefore does not require the watch to have been used already.
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