back to article Gov to encourage e-commerce by clarifying consumer rights

The Government plans to clarify and simplify consumers' rights in a bid to encourage online shoppers to make more use of them. It will publish a plan in the summer for helping shoppers to understand and exercise their rights. Government-commissioned research has found that 57% of UK consumers overall said that they would take …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Labour stop wasting money

    People know their rights, the distance selling act is well known and publicised by online customer and proprietor alike.

    This is just another example of Labour fiddling why the UK burns, Labour the Nero Complex.

  2. Richard Porter

    The problem is

    if you've bought something from a shop you can take it back and show them. You still have the item in your hand. If you send it back to a mail order supplier you don't have any confidence that you'll see your goods or your money again. You can't argue over the counter; you're at their mercy.

    You either go for the lowest price and accept that once in a while you'll get a dud, or you pay a bit more and use a reputable supplier.

  3. Eponymous Cowherd
    Black Helicopters

    What about the right....

    not to be spied on by Phorm while you are e-shopping?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    You call this an internet service?

    First I find that because of contention I get nowhere near the rates that you advertise the product at. Then I find that something you call "fair usage" means that not only are my downloads capped in every billing period, but if I go over these limits I have to pay a premium for each extra megabyte I download (and there's no way of knowing how much of my "quota" I've used up until I get the bill!) . Then I find that you throttle bandwidth for certain protocols (curiously enough, the more efficient the protocol is at reducing network traffic overall, the more you seem to want to throttle it). There are also frequent outages. And to cap it all off I had to read in an online tech newsletter that you're routing all my traffic through a box designed to spy on my traffic AND mangle websites that I and my kids look at by inserting ads for penis enlargement pills and bondage gear. And if I take steps to stop this spying/mangling? No Internet for you! That's what...

    All in all, a welcome muttering from the government in this case.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    house of cards

    So the long knives are out for Ms. Smith. A very British coup. Yes, minister?

    Unfortunately a new figurehead will not change anything in the way of policy on spying on the populace or the systematic ongoing efforts at tagging, spindling, mutilating, folding and finally leaving the records on a train somewhere (but not before having a ham-fisted attempt or three at converting the data into actual currency, be it merely political or dot com-style net(work) worth).

  6. Richard Wharram
    Pirate

    Distance Selling Act

    May be well publicised but it's still not clear what it means to an everyday transaction. I got conflicting advice from different consumer bodies over the telephone sale of a car where they took my deposit and then refunded it because they no longer wanted to sell the car at that price. I read the act and was none the wiser.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    but how many

    ask for the refund of postage to return the goods and the postage of getting them in the first place?

    this is the scam many ebay sellers use, They flog something for 99p, with £10 postage and only try to refund you the 99p, which they are not allowed to do.

    You are entitled to a FULL refund, including return postage if they do not supply it.

  8. mh.
    Thumb Down

    Oh dear

    "Clarify and simplify" tends to be synonymous with "abolish". UK law (I know about the different English vs Scottish legal systems) on sale of consumer goods is pretty good, but a lot of companies either aren't aware of it or keep quiet about it (ISP service is covered by different laws). How many companies know that guarantees cannot exclude things like being reasonably fit for purpose or being of reasonably quality for example? Even those little "warranty void if removed" stickers are inapplicable in law. If something goes wrong within the first 6 months of purchase, it's up to the retailer to prove that it wasn't faulty when it was bought. I hope "clarifying" doesn't mean "diluting" in this context.

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