UK: Returning damaged items without option for free replacement? I live outside of the UK, not a UK citizen or resident (I am also not a resident of the European Union), but I bought several items in the online store of a large UK department store chain. The transaction price made me eligible for free shipping. Many of the items arrived damaged, I took photos and got a refund for the items' value, not for the shipping, as shipping was free. On its web site, the store declares that damaged items of orders placed by customers located outside of the UK will not be replaced, only refunded. (Hence if I want a replacement, I will have to place a new order for the damaged items). However, in the time interval between the time when I placed the original order, and the time when the damaged items were delivered, the online store bumped up the prices of the damaged items. Also, since now I have less items to order, I will not be eligible for free shipping (unless I choose to add some items which are not really necessary to me, just to reach the threshold required for free shipping). I wrote to their customer service about these two problems. However their response was that they do not send replacements to customers who are outside of the UK, and I will have to place a new order, with the new prices, as well as pay the shipping fee. Is this legal according to the UK law, even when I am not a UK citizen?
Yes, it's absolutely legal. It turns out that UK retailers offer replacement out of their own politeness and are not required to do so by law. If they gave you refund then that's all they need to do.
You are not obligated to pick the thing up, but you are obligated to pay. Analogously, if you go into a restaurant and order a steak, you are obligated to pay for it, but you are not obligated to eat it. You can cancel the steak order within some reasonable short period of time (maybe a minute) – it depends on whether they have relied on your acceptance of their offer, and have done anything that puts them in a worse situation (such as "started cooking it"). You could have informed them that you decided that you didn't want the thing and they might have been able to cancel the order with no or minimum cost to you (depends on whether your job was simply "in the queue", or had they done something like ordered parts or detrimentally committed an employee to some schedule so that other customers could not be serviced). Once you accept their offer, you have an enforceable contract. The additional information about lateness of delivery doesn't clearly change the situation. If there were an explicit "time is of the essence" clause in your contract, related to any delay causing harm, then failure to meet a deadline could constitute a breach of contract. For example, if you have a contract where you will be transported to a location by a specific deadline so that you can get on the boat, failure to meet that deadline causes material harm (if you miss the boat, you suffer a loss). You apparently do not have any such clause, and there's no indication that you suffered a loss because of the delay in delivery. A reasonable delay would not be interpreted as the other party breaching the contract.
No Let's consider a similar scenario. If you made a beverage which poisoned a number of people, would you be absolved of liability because you gave it away for free? Of course not. As there is no contract between you, they would have to bring an action against you in the tort of negligence or negligent misstatement OR under consumer protection law. To succeed at tort they would need to prove that you owed them a duty of care; from Donoghue v Stevenson "You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonable foresee would be likely to injure ... persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought reasonably have them in contemplation ...". Most cases will founder on your inability to foresee the use to which your software may be put. Consumer law is jurisdiction specific but they generally contain warranties that what you provide (gratis or otherwise) is fit for purpose, merchantable and that you do not make false and misleading statements. There is a chance that a case brought under this sort of law could succeed as you have not limited the purpose, specifically declared that it is not of merchantable quality and have (presumable) said what it does so that, if it doesn't do what you said, you have been misleading and deceptive.
What is the name of the crime and/or tort I have committed? You are guilty of the crime of fraud, the crime of theft of the money and the item (I can't point you to the precise statute). You have breached your contract of sale. You are probably liable for fraud civilly (i.e. you could be sued for fraud). But, if one was really creative, I imagine that one could find more grounds for civil and/or criminal liability, although they would probably be unnecessary since the victims have plenty of remedies to secure all possible relief already. Who gets to keep the object? Under the Uniform Commercial Code, Article 2, in the United States, the general rule is delivery of possession by the seller (which didn't really happen here to one distinct person), but for unique goods, title passes when the unique good is identified to a contract with a buyer, so first in time to contract, first in right to the car, would probably prevail. But, I don't know what the rule would be in England and Wales. Is it handled differently if the &quot;valuable physical object&quot; is real estate? Land is harder to defraud someone with, because a reasonable person knows that in England and Wales real estate title is (usually, but not always) represented by a certificate of ownership maintained by a public official in the Land Registry, and is easily checked (about 15% of land in England and Wales show in the link is not registered so the possibility for deception is somewhat greater in that context). Also, generally, you don't pay for real property until you simultaneously receive payment in good funds, while brief extensions of credit for a non-perfectly contemporaneous sale transaction are more common in cases involving tangible personal property.
Could the store give the customer credit or must they actual return the money? The store has the legal obligation to return the money if the customer demands to be reimbursed. Section 155(4)(a) of the BC Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act explicitly provides reimbursement &quot;to a consumer or class of consumers&quot;. The store's unilateral, inflexible decision to give the customer credit in lieu of a reimbursement is in violation of sections 8(3)(a) and 9(1) of the Act. That approach constitutes undue pressure to enter into an additional consumer transaction, more so where management is aware of the issue and refuses to fix it.
The retailer You can try making a subject access request under Articles 15(1) and 15(3) of the UK GDPR. Provide as much information as you can (your name, date of purchase, store you purchased it from, copy of the receipt, etc.) and ask for the serial number. If they still have it, and it is stored in a way which is linked to you in an identifiable way, then they are obliged to provide it without undue delay (and in any event within 30 days). You may want to provide a copy of your passport in the request to pre-empt them coming back with an ID check request under Article 12(6), which then allows them to delay processing the request until you have replied. As stated above, if they no longer have the data or you are not identifiable from the data then they do not have to provide it. If they do have to provide it but refuse then you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office or ask the County Court for a compliance order under section 167 of the Data Protection Act 2018. The insurer Regulation 3(1) of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 prohibits &quot;unfair commercial practices&quot;. Regulation 3(4) provides that a commerical practice is unfair if, inter alia, it is listed in Schedule 1. Paragraph 27 of Schedule 1 contains the following item: Requiring a consumer who wishes to claim on an insurance policy to produce documents which could not reasonably be considered relevant as to whether the claim was valid, or failing systematically to respond to pertinent correspondence, in order to dissuade a consumer from exercising his contractual rights. As you've provided proof that you purchased the item, you can try to argue that having the serial number of the lost item can not &quot;reasonably be considered relevant&quot;. Yes, the contract says that you must provide it, but consumer rights legislation overrides contractual provisions. You may also want to consider dealing with the insurer by email/post instead of by phone, (a) to avoid continuing to waste time on hold, and (b) because if they systematically fail to respond then this may also cause them to be in breach of the above provision, (c) to acquire evidence which you can use later. Escalating If you get no results from the insurer, make a formal complaint to them through their complaints process. Under the FCA Handbook rule DISP 1.3.1R, the insurer is required to provide a complaints procedure. Under rule DISP 1.6.2R they are required to provide a final response to a complaint within 8 weeks. If you are not happy with the response, you can escalate the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service which has the power to make financial awards pursuant to section 229 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (&quot;FSMA&quot;). Doing so is free of charge and is therefore a good alternative to going to court. The ombudsman can also make awards that are not strictly based on law (i.e. they can go further than the courts can) because of section 228 of FSMA which provides that: &quot;A complaint is to be determined by reference to what is, in the opinion of the ombudsman, fair and reasonable in all the circumstances of the case.&quot; You must generally escalate a complaint to the Ombudsman within 6 months of receiving your final response from the insurer (rule DISP 2.8.2R).
Yes, but ... It doesn’t protect you. Let’s imagine you put such a clause in and a person in Europe used your service notwithstanding: they’ve broken the contract but you’ve broken the law. You get the fine and they get ... nothing. Because you can’t contract outside the law you never had a valid contract with them so you have no basis to sue. Further, because you are purporting to something you can’t legally do, you are probably on the wrong side of misleading and deceptive consumer protection law: which is another fine. If you can ensure that you don’t breach local law - like by not operating over the internet - then you can choose not to deal with e.g. Europeans. If you can’t guarantee that, then you’re stuffed.
Yes there is If no estimate is provided, the reasonable time is 30 days. Findlaw's page on Shipping Goods and the 30-Day Rule says: If the business is unable to ship within the promised time or within 30 days, the merchant must promptly tell the customer by mail, telephone or email, and give a new shipping estimate and give the customer a chance to cancel their order and receive a full refund. This offer to cancel or accept the new shipping date must give the customer sufficient time to make a decision. In other words, you can't call to inform a customer you can't make a shipping time and then demand an immediate answer. If the 10-12 estimate has passed, and the merchant has not notified the customer &quot;promptly&quot;, say withing a week, the customer is entitled to demand a full refund,m with no &quot;restocking fee&quot; and the FTC can enforce this. The FTC has wide ranging powers to enforce the 30-Day Rule. Businesses can be sued by the FTC for injunctive relief, damages of up to $16,000 per violation, and redress for the consumer. Additionally, state and local agencies can sue [a merchant] for violating consumer protection law And This FTC page says: The Rule requires that when you advertise merchandise, you must have a reasonable basis for stating or implying that you can ship within a certain time. If you make no shipment statement, you must have a reasonable basis for believing that you can ship within 30 days. That is why direct marketers sometimes call this the &quot;30-day Rule.&quot; If, after taking the customer’s order, you learn that you cannot ship within the time you stated or within 30 days, you must seek the customer’s consent to the delayed shipment. If you cannot obtain the customer’s consent to the delay -- either because it is not a situation in which you are permitted to treat the customer’s silence as consent and the customer has not expressly consented to the delay, or because the customer has expressly refused to consent -- you must, without being asked, promptly refund all the money the customer paid you for the unshipped merchandise. ... When you learn that you cannot ship on time, you must decide whether you will ever be able to ship the order. If you decide that you cannot, you must promptly cancel the order and make a full refund. If you decide you can ship the order later, you must seek the customer’s consent to the delay. You may use whatever means you wish to do this -- such as the telephone, fax, mail, or email -- as long as you notify the customer of the delay reasonably quickly. The customer must have sufficient advance notification to make a meaningful decision to consent to the delay or cancel the order. The page goes into significant further detail on a merchant's obligations. All of this applies to &quot;goods a customer orders from the seller by mail, telephone, fax, or on the Internet.&quot; It would not apply to goods ordered in person at the store.