Sale of Goods Act 1979 and the Sale and Supply of Goods to Consumers Regulations 2002 (SoG & SSGCR)
Must be english things. Never heard of them in the US of A. Anyone?
Saturday December 25, 07:30 PM
Consumeractive: Caveat eBay emptor
By Dinah Greek
Consumers often find there are areas that the long arm of the law can't reach; a good example being online auctions.
This is not to say online auctions are totally lawless places, despite their reputation as a breeding ground for fraudsters.
But tried and trusty consumer laws such as the Distance Selling Regulations certainly don't apply and, colourful though the characters selling online may be, the law in many instances can be pretty grey.
You'd probably be hard pressed to get the Sale of Goods Act 1979 and the Sale and Supply of Goods to Consumers Regulations 2002 (SoG & SSGCR) to work for you here as well.
Having little knowledge about the person you are trading with or whether you are buying new or second-hand doesn't help. It can leave you, like Gordon Gray, severely disappointed with your purchase.
"I bought an ADSL modem from an eBay trader," Mr Gray told me. "It worked well for six months, then it malfunctioned. I only paid £30 for it but I am a pensioner and need to watch my finances carefully.
"My argument is that this cannot be considered of 'merchantable quality' if it means buying a new modem every six months."
I don't believe this trader took Mr Gray for a ride but he did think the modem was new, even though further investigation appears to show it was reconditioned.
To complicate things further, can this person trading on eBay be considered a company or a private seller? This disctinction makes all the difference when it comes to applying the SoG and SSGCR.
"It doesn't matter if the goods are new or second-hand, if an individual decides to sell something at an online auction, consumer laws do not apply. So you can sell an unwanted Christmas present and the buyer can't expect you to compensate them if things go wrong," explained Adrienne Seaman, leading consumer lawyer at solicitors Stephenson Harwood.
"A company selling online is another matter and consumer law will apply. Although the Distance Selling Regulations probably don't apply they may apply to some business/consumer sales which aren't strictly 'auctions'.
"But the difficulty obviously arises in deciding when a private individual becomes a business. If someone buys goods specifically to sell online then they could be considered a company, even if it is just one person carrying out the trading."
The trader selling the modem that Mr Gray bought could conceivably fall into this category. But in the case of something suspected to be second-hand, long warranties can't be expected, although the trader claims he did offer a three-month warranty.
Caveat emptor, or buyer beware, as we always say at Computeractive. Treat auctions with respect and they can be great places to get bargains. But do your homework first and remember: if it looks to good to be true, it probably is.
An expensive mistake?
A slip of the finger can be as costly as a slip of the tongue. Alex Savarizadeh wanted to sign up for Tiscali's daytime £4.99 internet package. He thought he had signed up to this online, so was horrified a few weeks later to get a call from BT telling him of an unusually large bill.
When he called Tiscali he was told that he had in fact signed up to its pay-as-you-go package. "I pointed out that a mistake on their on-screen instructions must have lead to this problem but Tiscali are not accepting responsibility," he said.
I contacted Tiscali and was told by a spokeswoman that she was sure the blame did not lie with the company. She could not see how Mr Savarizadeh could automatically link to the wrong sign on screen. But, she added, Tiscali would "hold our hands up to it being our mistake" if he can prove his case.
"There is an easy way to check - he should have the confirmation email we send which confirms to him the product he registered for," Tiscali told me.
I have come across this type of problem before, but it is nearly impossible for me to know where the mistake lies in situations such as these. Is it a mistake by the consumer, a glitch in the software, or are the instruction misleading, as Mr Savarizadeh believes?
The moral of the tale is to always check confirmation emails just to be sure
Sale of Goods Act 1979 and the Sale and Supply of Goods to Consumers Regulations 2002 (SoG & SSGCR)
