Consumer information and protection
These regulations are designed to protect the rights of consumers, both before and after they purchase goods.
You can find all 37 regulations that relate to consumer information and protection here [opens in new window].
Tell us what you think should happen to these regulations and why, being specific where possible:
- Should they be scrapped altogether?
- Can they be merged with existing regulations?
- Can we simplify them – or reduce the bureaucracy associated with them?
- Have you got any ideas to make these regulations better?
- Do you think they should be left as they are?
generally good protection. Where reason to believe that regs stopping people buying what they want, eg second hand untested electrical goods, or causing waste of these goods, allow sale with a safety warning eg this product could be dangerous, it has not been certified safe / officially tested, you buy and use at your own risk.
you could get a signature that this read, but allow people the choice!
I would like better price comparison information on fresh produce. At the moment, I gather it is legal for supermarkets to say, for example, “applies at X pence each” and “200g apples at Y pence” so the consumer has no way of knowing whether it’s cheaper to buy loose or packaged.an
Another trick that some supermarkets use is to band two items together and say “Special Offer, 2 for £X” which you would normally expect to be cheaper than buying the same two items separately. This is not always the case, and sometimes the “Special Offer” is actually charged at a higher cost than if you buy the items separately. I feel this particularly puts elderly people at a disadvantage, as due to ill health they are not always able to work this out and they take “Special Offer” at face value.
This Act requires retailers to notify the TV Licensing Authority whenever a TV, DVD, video recorder, digital box or PC with TV card is sold within 28 days of every sale and provide full details of the customer.
The Act was introduced in 1967. Modern communication methods means that such steps are now redundant and the law should be repealed.
I would like websites and places like Argos to have to say in their catalogues where something is made, as you can find in shops. I would also like items to have instructions on them on how to open them, esp if they are contained in a tough to open package or contain parts that are fragile and don’t respond well to sizzors, on the outside together with instructions on where the instructions are. I would like there to be a commmon place where these instructions can be found or a requirement that a guide to where on the packet they can be found on the bottom left corner, say, of everything sold. Or at least, if the package contains something fragile you don’t want to damage as you open it, marks on the packaging telling you were it’s safe to cut.
I don’t know if this is part of this survey but, as a consumer, I’d like it if manufacturers were required to give their item as sold to school children, say 11 yr olds, to see if, with the instructions supplied, they can open and assemble the product and use it without further help. I suspect that if this was mandatory instructions would quickly improve. Would also be good if manufacturers could put copies of all instructions on their websites for when you loose them, as some manufacturers already do.
I think more thought should be given to how you repair something if you’ve had it for some time, or if you move into a new home and have to deal with something a previous owner has installed. I think it would be good if extractor fans for toilets and showers, etc., and fire alarms, came in two parts, one that remained fixed to the wall/ceiling and one containing as much of the rest as possible so when it wears out it can be more easily replaced without damaging the fabric of the house.
I think front doors, of the ‘PVC’ type, should contain a wire with sockets either side, of a standard type, so you can easily fix a doorbell on to them. At the moment most doorbells are radio based and metal within the doorframes seems to prevent this from working. If there was a standard bell manufacturers would manufacturer for it.
There are a number of different pieces of legislation that deal with information which businesses are required to provide on their websites (e.g. name and contact details for the business; certain additional information where the website is used to conclude contracts). These requirements overlap in various places, and having to review each piece of legislation to ensure compliance adds an extra layer of complexity for businesses.
Significant confusion, time and costs can be caused to garden retailers operating cross-border in England and Scotland because of the different labelling for seed potatoes sold to gardeners in the 2 countries. The Horticultural Trades Association believes that the labelling requirements for sale to the gardening public should be simplified and made consistent between England and Scotland.
This is a diverse and complex area of law, some rules are old, some new. Much of the UK consumer protection stems from the EU and is thus compulsory. It has proved necessary because consumer protection is just that, the protection needed for all of us as consumers. In the UK we got rid of 23 pieces of consumer protection law because the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, which crosses market sectors, was being transposed here and we needed to fit with that, so some weeding has already happened. This type of principles based legislation is quite new and designed so that we do not have to wait for a huge problem and then move on to trying to pass a law to eradicate it once the damage is done. Whilst that is good it does not necessarily mean that this approach works for everything. It is certainly true that consumers and traders are not fully aware of their rights and obligations. The government and the EU’s existing agenda on simplifying consumer law should allow the range of discussion and consultation necessary, if we are to avoid throwing the baby out with the bath water. This is not a quick fix matter. We need to look at: why the laws we have are there; the risks in deleting them; how the law can be easier to understand and to use, for consumers who need redress, for business who need to adopt the new mindset of trading fairly, and vitally for enforcers whom we task with policing it.
We are already well placed to achieve new and better consumer law. Along with the simplification agenda that is already in train the current Law Commission consultation that looks at whether consumers should have redress for unfair misrepresentations and aggressive practices looks at simplifying a part of the consumer protection legislation. The proposed ‘civil sanctions pilot’ is designed to test some new tools for enforcers, which have already been detailed in the Regulation, Enforcement and Sanctions Act. This RES was the result of work already done on fair enforcement by professors Hampton and Macrory. These are steps on the way for an issue that is already well and truly on the agenda. We can reach a point where the law makes sense to those using it and delivers fairly, but this cannot happen in a trice. A knee jerk reaction to red tape deletion would be fatal.
For free trade to exist peopl einvolved in a trade must::-
a] Be able to know with whom they are trading
b] Know what is being sold and for what price
Virtually all of these regulations are in place to ensure that those crtitera are met. Some people have claimed that this should be left to the market to sort out but the legisaltion is generally in place because the marklet has shown itself to be unable to react in a timely manner to prevent excessive consumer detriment.
In any case, the advent of the global marketplace has meant that the pool of potential customers is so large traders can frequently ignore consumer pressure.
The legislation could undoubtedly do with some consolidation – for example the offence of selling tobacco to underage persons is in a 1933 enactment, despite a number of other newer Acts varying and adding to it. The important point is that new legislation of this type should be agreed between the business and enforcement communities BEFORE the lawyers are allowed to draft it and the drafters must be more responsive to any concerns addressed rather than dismissing out of hand, as has happened in the past.
In addition, when an Act is passed and the duty to enforce has been imposed, the Government must properly back the enforcement process, instead of having the situation we had with metrication, where the Weights and Measures officers given the duty to enforce were completely abandoned by Central Government when the media started a witch hunt.
No legislation which protects consumers again unscrupulous traders should be scrapped or watered down. By all means codify the legislation so that consumers can understand it more easily or make it more accessible so that peolple are aware of their rights. Unfortunately, it is still necessary to prevent unscrupulous traders informing consumers that they have no rights when they wish to make a complaint. Until unscrupulous traders play fair then we as consumers need all the protection we can get.