Consumer
Protection Act
If you sell products
or service to consumers from a base in the European Community (EC),
then you are obliged to comply with this act.
You cannot prepare
legal terms and conditions which contravene this act, or try to impose
your own rules.
Most of the terms
will be familiar to any normal shop or business trading with a consumer
in a traditional outlet. However traders new to the web should be aware
of the Distance Selling Regulations introduced in 2000. These require
a merchant to offer (and confirm in writing) to accept the return of
the goods for any reason with 7 days of receipt.
You can find out
more about the Consumer Protection Act and Distance Selling Regulations
from the DTI.
To understand more
about the subject also review the information published by the Consumers
Association (Which). They also run the Which Webtrader scheme to
appraise and recommend consumer websites - this may be of particular
interest to ecommerce sites.
