Bought a product online. Store sent me something different stating original product should not have been listed online UK store has sales of selected products every so often. My wife and I have tried for a few years to purchase a reusable advent calendar in store as they become available however have never succeeded as they sell out very quickly. This year my wife found the product for sale on their website and quickly purchased two (one for her, one for me). When the order was delivered we had two totally different advent calendars. My wife has called customer services who have stated that the products should not have been sold online, should have been an in store sale item only, and that she should have had an email explaining this and that the two replacement calendars should not have been sent out. Since my wife did not get a notification email and these calendars were sent out, we assume human error has been compounded onto human error (product incorrectly listed online, someone didn’t send an email and someone sent different products in the order). The company is refusing to send us the products we ordered, stating we need to go in store and buy them there, if there’s any available. Is this our only option? What arguments can we make to the store to deliver the products ordered?
You had bought product A. That constitutes you offering the seller a contract for you to get product A for your money. They keep the money and send product B - and now are in breach of the contract, as that is materially different from the contract both agreed to. Legal recourse is, depending on the customer protection laws, a refund of the payments or getting the correct product A. If you have a right for the Product A depends on exactly how it was advertized and the exact ToS.
You can't, in general, know whether a distributor of a work has permission to distribute, or is a pirate site. I verified that they have posted an illegal copy of a work that I created, and I know that I did not grant permission to them (or anyone) to infringe my copyright. Both hosting and downloading works without permission is a violation of copyright law, so both parties are liable. Downloaders may erroneously rely on the "I didn't know!" defense, which in the US carries no legal weight. Even so, if you download my book, it will probably cost me vastly more to sue you for infringement than the damages that I might be awarded over your infringement. Usually, copyright holders go after the pirate sites, and only rarely go after particularly egregious serial downloaders.
I only address the core legal question. The first question regards where the review appeared: on the facility's own web page, or on some third party web page? In the latter case, there is the possibility that soliciting a modified review in exchange for something of value violates the terms of usage for that web site. There are also US federal regulations pertaining to advertising, as well as state regulations. The federal regulations are here. The main question is whether what you say constitutes an endorsement, as specified here. They define an endorsement as: any advertising message (including verbal statements, demonstrations, or depictions of the name, signature, likeness or other identifying personal characteristics of an individual or the name or seal of an organization) that consumers are likely to believe reflects the opinions, beliefs, findings, or experiences of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser, even if the views expressed by that party are identical to those of the sponsoring advertiser. The regulation in fact gives some helpful examples (reading them helps to clarify what an "endorsement" is), the last of which involves a dog: Example 8: A consumer who regularly purchases a particular brand of dog food decides one day to purchase a new, more expensive brand made by the same manufacturer. She writes in her personal blog that the change in diet has made her dog's fur noticeably softer and shinier, and that in her opinion, the new food definitely is worth the extra money. This posting would not be deemed an endorsement under the Guides. Assume now that the consumer joins a network marketing program under which she periodically receives various products about which she can write reviews if she wants to do so. If she receives a free bag of the new dog food through this program, her positive review would be considered an endorsement under the Guides. The distinction at issue is whether the suggestion of receiving something of value might influence a person's statements. You can pay for a positive review, as a reward for saying nice things, as long as the reviewer had no reason to think that they would get get something in return for a review. Taking your review to be an endorsement, as required here, Endorsements must reflect the honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experience of the endorser. The regulation does not require you to reveal every thing that came into your mind in writing the review, but it is pretty clear that suppressing the concern about vaccination paperwork and the star count constitutes a dishonest statement of opinion of the endorser. Material connections must also be revealed: When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement (i.e., the connection is not reasonably expected by the audience), such connection must be fully disclosed. For example, when an endorser who appears in a television commercial is neither represented in the advertisement as an expert nor is known to a significant portion of the viewing public, then the advertiser should clearly and conspicuously disclose either the payment or promise of compensation prior to and in exchange for the endorsement or the fact that the endorser knew or had reason to know or to believe that if the endorsement favored the advertised product some benefit, such as an appearance on television, would be extended to the endorser In the 7th example under material disclosure, they describe a blogger who received something of value in connection with a review: the blogger should clearly and conspicuously disclose that he received the gaming system free of charge I should point out that these regulations are written by the FTC, and the implied interpretation (such as that the blogger should disclose... with no clearly stated penalty for failure to disclose) is an FTC interpretation. 15 USC 52 prohibits false advertisements for services affecting commerce. This is the jurisdictional aspect of their complaint against Cure Encapsulations, where defendants paid for reviews on a third-party website (this case involves a relationship between defendant and a fourth-party company that apparently hunts for and pays reviewers). This is apparently the first instance in which the FTC has gone against a business for paying for reviews on a third party web site, so it's not a foregone conclusion that they will prevail in court. Still, Chevron deference means that they will probably win at least on the jurisdictional question. The main difference is that in the Cure Encapsulation case, the violation was even more egregious in that the individuals were not even customers, and in this instance the would-(not)-be review was not the honest opinion of the endorser.
Under U.S. copyright law, the First Sale Doctrine protects such conduct. As the U.S. Justice Department explains: The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner. The right to distribute ends, however, once the owner has sold that particular copy. See 17 U.S.C. § 109(a) &amp; (c). U.S. law with respect to the First Sale Doctrine is typical, and copyright law is fairly uniform internationally due to some relevant intellectual property treaties. But there are hundreds of countries in the world, and some of them might not include the First Sale Doctrine in their jurisprudence. For example, I do not know how this would be handled under the laws of the People's Republic of China, or under Islamic law.
At the federal level, gift cards seem to be treated as a special case of electronic fund transfer. 15 U.S. Code § 1693l–1 and the corresponding regulations presently regulate disclosure of fees and expiration, and do not directly say anything about sale of such a card. There might be relevant state laws, though Washington state laws mostly mirror the federal law (also allowing issuing a card with an expiration date if given for no value to a charitable organization). You can actually get your last $5 back in cash in Washington per RCW 19.240.020. A gift card / certificate isn't a "thing" in the way that an apple, hammer or table is, it's a contractual relationship. If you own a thing, you can freely re-sell it to whoever you want (assuming there isn't an express statutory prohibition against the sale of the thing). You cannot universally sell (assign) a contract right – there is a default preference that you should be able to, but Amazon has in this case said "No, you can't".
No, it does not. There is indeed a 2-year guarantee for all goods, but "goods" is defined to be a "tangible movable item" according to Directive 1999/44/EC Article 1, subsection 2(b). In less legalese, a physical item; software doesn't count. While there has been discussion about extending this protection to software, I'm not aware of this having been done yet. Even if it were, determining whether goods are "faulty" ultimately comes down to whether it conforms to the contract of sale (Article 2). I think it's likely that vendors in this area would put a disclaimer for unforeseen security vulnerabilities, or something to that effect.
"Doing the same thing" is very common. We even have names for certain categories of websites, such as "web shop" and "blog". Such concepts are not protected in general. Obviously, you can't copy the name of existing webshop, or their logo, but things like a "rectangular layout of products for sale" aren't original. There is of course a grey area here, because there's a continuum of similarity. In general, similarities that follow from technical justifications are acceptable (having an upload button is sort of the point for your website), similarities that are cosmetic only (same color choice) might be interpreted as intentional attempts to cause confusion.
My understanding is that this isn't a contractual term, but rather a warning that the items don't satisfy legal requirements for individual sale. The seller and manufacturer likely don't care whether you resell the items, but the government does. In the US, at least, regulations of the Food and Drug Administration require that (with certain exceptions) food items sold at retail must be marked with a Nutrition Facts label, showing calorie counts, fat and sugar content, and so on. The FDA has information on this requirement, including citations to the relevant sections of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). For example, if you buy a big multipack of tiny ("fun size") candy bars, the manufacturer usually won't have printed Nutrition Facts on each candy bar's wrapper (because it's too small). There will instead be a label on the outer bag. As such, you can't legally resell the candy bars individually, because they don't meet labeling requirements. In fact, in the FDA page I linked above, you can see that manufacturers are required to print "This unit not labeled for retail sale" on individual items if they don't have Nutrition Facts labels. See the 12th item in the table of exemptions.