Are companies allowed to lie about &quot;offer expires in X days!!&quot; Often companies online state that they have "limited time offers", where you can buy a product for a discount. However, i'm sometimes suspicious about this, and suspect that they're not limited offers at all. Are companies allowed to say "20% off! Offer expires in 4 days!", but then when those 4 days are over, simply wait a day or 2 and start the offer again? Or is this prohibited by consumer protection laws? Edit: the jurisdiction could be either the US or the UK.
The answer would vary considerably. Consumer protection laws in some jurisdictions would find such a scheme to be an actionable deceptive trade practice, while consumer protection laws in other jurisdictions would find that it was not an actionable deceptive trade practice. One of the trickier points is quantifying the injury. How are you harmed if you buy a good at 20% off when it is really 20% off? How are you harmed if you don't buy a good at 20% off and then later buy the same good at 20% off when you were expecting it to be full price? Some consumer protection laws require that you show injury, and in those cases, it probably wouldn't be actionable. But, other consumer protection laws make false statements actionable, even if there is no reliance upon the statement or harm caused, in which case statutory damages might be recoverable.
what would be the threshold for a lie to be actionable where you could claim a damage? There is no award for &quot;lies&quot; which clearly are inconsequential. A customer will never make decisions based on whether &quot;menu options have changed&quot; or whether the business is honest on the statement &quot;your call is important to us&quot;. The impact that the duration of these statements have on the customer is negligible at best, since omitting these statements does not improve the company's response time anyway. The statement &quot;your call is important to us&quot; might not even be a lie. Many companies know that it is in their best interest to gather information from their customers on what to improve, lest customers switch to a competitor or file suit. The lack of objective standards renders statements such as &quot;best pizza in town&quot; unascertainable. Accordingly, it would be unreasonable for a customer to rely on criteria that are subjective, undefined, unclear, and/or palpably fictitious. Only statements like &quot;scientifically proven&quot; and &quot;lose x pounds in y hours&quot; might be within scope of consumer protection laws (see also unfair and misleading practices). The assessment of those scenarios requires more detail, including disclaimers and other &quot;small letters&quot; that are --or ought to be-- disclosed no later than the formation of the contract.
Are online stores supposed to state the true “order cost”/value of an order on the package/envelope for the customs? Yes Is it common practice to slash 10x off of the price for the customs to not add various fees? Common? Probably no. Uncommon? Also, probably no. Isn't that illegal? Yes Of course, they can claim it was a mistake if ever found out, but if they do it consistently, that seems difficult... Not to mention there must be electronic proof of how much each order actually cost the customer? Yes Look, robbing banks is illegal but people still rob banks. Similarly, ripping off HM Revenue &amp; Customs is illegal but people still do that too. In fact, far more people do that than rob banks.
Since you asked two questions: No and No Does a company’s T&amp;C or their house rules supersede law No and is asking private health status (including the request to wear a mask) an offence? No A company cannot require you to do things that are against the law but they can require you to do things that go further than the legal minimum. The UK and Spanish governments do not require you to wear a mask but they do not prohibit private organisations (like airlines) for making it a requirement to access their facilities. The law requires that they make reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities. But you don’t have a disability, you just can’t sleep with a mask on. If you had a disability you would have no trouble in getting a letter from your doctor to that effect. The contract requires them to take you from the UK to Spain: they don’t have to enable you to sleep. If you read the T&amp;C, you will find that they can refuse to carry you if, in their reasonable opinion, you pose a hazard to the aircraft or the people aboard it.
All of this is illegal. You do not give a jurisdiction so I will use NSW, Australia as an example but many countries' laws have similar effect. Australian Consumer Law prohibits misleading and deceptive conduct: It is illegal for a business to engage in conduct that misleads or deceives or is likely to mislead or deceive consumers or other businesses. It doesn't matter that what you have said is strictly speaking factual - the way it has been said is likely to mislead or deceive. However, what you are proposing goes further and IMO crosses the line into fraud (s192E of the Crimes Act): 192E Fraud (1) A person who, by any deception, dishonestly: (b) obtains any financial advantage or causes any financial disadvantage, is guilty of the offence of fraud. Maximum penalty: Imprisonment for 10 years. (2) A person’s obtaining of property belonging to another may be dishonest even if the person is willing to pay for the property. In addition to the illegality, stealing other people's money is morally wrong by any reasonable standards of morality.
Can a moderation team in a game extend a ban that you have just because they want to TL;DR Yes and no. It's their platform and you broke the rules that you agreed to. Therefore, you forfeited your right to use the service for as long as they deem appropriate up to and including forever. In exercising this power they must act reasonably which, in the absence of anything in the contract (and I can't see anything) means that their response must be proportionate and offer you procedural fairness. It's possible that they haven't done this - it may even be likely. However, in order to have this overturned, clause 24 of the EULA requires you to take the dispute to arbitration. Clause 24.4 sets out how to initiate this.
This doesn't sound like fraud (against you, at least), but it does sound like an unfair or deceptive trade practice, which is outlawed by Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act and perhaps the Pennsylvania Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law, both of which prohibit unfair and deceptive trade practices. I don't know about Pennsylvania, but the FTC has on many occasions taken action against companies for engaging in just this kind of behavior. To find out whether you would be able to take action against the other company, you'd want to find a good competition lawyer in Pennsylvania. For some more basic background on the FTC's rules, check out this primer.
I am not aware of any law making this illegal. You need to avoid any "bait and switch" tactics, though, like initially offering cola for $1 and then not actually letting them buy it for that price.