Computer Tutor (January)

Buying Online – Your Rights.

After Christmas and all those purchases and gifts it is useful to know your rights. If you have bought online from a UK-based company, many of your rights are the same as when you buy from a shop. However, you also have additional rights. These additional rights apply to all forms of home shopping, not just internet sales. You are entitled to:

· A 'cooling off' period during which an order can be cancelled without any reason and a full refund made. But you may have to pay return postage if you decide you do not want an item.
· A full refund if the goods or services are not provided by the date you agreed. If you didn't agree a date, then you are entitled to a refund if the goods or services are not provided within 30 days.

Insurance and banking are excluded from these rights. For financial services you may have rights under the Financial Services (Distance Marketing) Regulations 2004.

Online Auctions: “Buyer beware”

Be careful when buying at online auctions because unlike other sellers, they can refuse to accept responsibility for the quality of the goods they auction. Read the conditions of sale with care. If the seller is a business then the standard terms of the contract set out in the Unfair Terms In Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 still apply. This means if you buy a CD from a private seller on Ebay and when it arrives it doesn’t work, the seller is under no obligation to refund or replace it. Paypal (www.paypal.co.uk ) and Ebay (www.ebay.co.uk) do offer a dispute resolution service, but in reality their obligations are limited.

Useful tip – Buy on Credit card.

If you are making a large purchase online costing over £100 and you paid by credit card, you may be protected by the Consumer Credit Act. This states that the credit card company is equally liable for any defects. Therefore, should a problem arise, you can claim either from the trader or from the credit card company. Also many credit card companies offer extra online fraud protection, which debit cards generally do not.

Remember

If you buy goods on the Internet, you still have the same rights as if you were shopping on the high street, in relation to faulty or poorly described goods.

For more information visit Consumer Direct: www.consumerdirect.gov.uk and The Office of Fair Trading: www.oft.gov.uk.

Sourced from www.consumerdirect.gov.uk

By Caroline
The ‘PuterTutor.