Consumer Rights

Key legislation- Consumer Rights Act of 2015 – aimed to be a simplified single law to help reduce confusion among both businesses and consumers and there increase trade confidence. It covers

What should happen when goods are faulty
How closely goods need to correspond to what has been agreed
Fairness of contracts
Process for dealing with uncompetitive businesses
Rules regulating inspection standards and regularity

Previously these were part of various earlier laws, and did not govern digital content or explicitly set out consumer rights with regards to below par standards.

It also provide for the expansion of the alternative dispute resolution service (ADR) to all sectors. This is an organisations that can mediate between a consumer and a business if they are unable to do so themselves.

It is still advised and expected that in the majority of cases consumers and businesses will settle their own dispute, in many cases through formal complaints processes set up by businesses. But where this is not practical or successful the ADR can be used instead.

If this fails the case can be taken to court, but this is expensive, time consuming and therefore rarely occurs.

As a basic mantra, goods must fulfil two criteria.

They must be of satisfactory quality as described
Fit for purpose and last a reasonable length of time.

Terms that need to be explained

Goods – any item you can physically hold.

As Described – mean that the item must fit the description provided by the seller, i.e a blue cotton shirt must be both blue and made of cotton.

Satisfactory quality – More ambiguous as satisfactory is open to subjectivity. The law suggests that this should mean a reasonable person would be satisfied with it, but this just reintroduces the ambiguity in the case of reasonable. Common sense is probably worth applying. An expensive TV which has part of its screen blurry is clearly not of satisfactory quality, but other case may be less clear cut. If you are unsure it may be worth seeking advice beforehand, but businesses often err on the side of caution in these examples anyway in order to maintain good customer relations.

Fit for purpose – The good must do the job advertised. This does not apply in certain circumstance however if you do not receive written or verbal confirmation for particular context. For example, if you buy new headlights without asking if they will work on your car you cannot get them replaced. But if you ask the seller if they will and they say yes but do not, you are entitled to. Get written confirmation of these confirmations if you can in order to protect yourself.

Reasonable length of time – similarly to satisfactory quality this is clearly open to interpretation, but again think of on average how long you would expect a particular good to last. Good walking boots for example should not be falling apart after a couple of months, but cheap torches may have a shorter expected life span.

These clearly are open to a degree of interpretation, but in general given consumers very powerful rights in most transactions.

The table below are the rights are referred to as your ‘statutory rights’. Legally they take priority over any individual companies internal polices, which are why in the terms and conditions its say ‘these polices do not affect your statutory rights.

Other points of interest.

You don’t necessarily need a recent to prove purchase, if you can prove it another way such as via a bank statement then this should work too.
Items should be returned to the store not the manufacturer, if they tell you this is the case this is wrong
Rights apply on sites such as ebay too, although while these right covers all goods in the UK it may be difficult to enforce if the suppliers is overseas.
Only the person who has paid for a good legally has these rights, but they can be transferred for gifts if it is written on the part of the receipt held by the store (it technically becomes an extra clause in the contract) Some stores provide gift receipts to do this for you.
Rights apply to freebies that come with a particular deal (such as wifi with a phone package) but not freebies that are given to you on your own.
If a delivery is necessary for a refund this should be included, provided the cheapest delivery option is chosen.

Sources (consumer rights)

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