Do you understand ‘ Distance Selling’?

Do you fully understand 'Distance Selling'?

Distance Selling

The Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 superseded The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013.

These regulations create categories of “on premises”, “off premises” and “distance” contracts, and require specific information to be provided in relation to each category of contract.

Consumers are entitled to cancel both “off premises” and “distance” contracts, without having to give a reason, within 14 days of taking delivery of the goods. This time period can be extended up to 12 months if the consumer is not given the correct information including, but not limited to their rights to cancel.

A consumer is defined in regulation 4 as an individual acting for purposes which are wholly or mainly outside that individual’s trade, business, craft or profession. A trader is therefore a person acting for purposes relating to that person’s trade, business, craft or profession, whether acting personally or through another person acting in the trader’s name or on the trader’s behalf.  Where necessary, it is for the business seller to show that a purchaser is a trader.

An “off-premises contract” means a contract between a trader and a consumer which is any of these—

(a)          A contract concluded in the simultaneous physical presence of the trader and the consumer, in a place which is not the business premises of the trader;

(b)          A contract for which an offer was made by the consumer in the simultaneous physical presence of the trader and the consumer, in a place which is not the business premises of the trader;

(c)           A contract concluded on the business premises of the trader or through any means of distance communication immediately after the consumer was personally and individually addressed in a place which is not the business premises of the trader in the simultaneous physical presence of the trader and the consumer;

(d)          A contract concluded during an excursion organized by the trader with the aim or effect of promoting and selling goods or services to the consumer;

A “distance contract” means a contract concluded between a trader and a consumer under an organized distance sales or service-provision scheme without the simultaneous physical presence of the trader and the consumer, with the exclusive use of one or more means of distance communication up to and including the time at which the contract is concluded;

Two particular requirements can be extracted from that definition.

·         It must be an organized distance sales or service-provision scheme, so ad hoc, or individually negotiated arrangements would not seem to be covered.

 

·         It requires the exclusive use of one or more means of distance communication up to and including the time at which the contract is concluded.  So if there has been or will be direct face to face contact at some point up to and including the time at which the contract is concluded, then it is not a distance sale.

A contract is said to be concluded when an offer to be bound by it has been accepted. An offer in the course of negotiations is not an offer to be bound, but is part of a pre-contractual negotiation.

Similarly any offer that is subject to any other condition being fulfilled e.g. the car being serviced, or finance being agreed, is similarly not concluded until that condition has been fulfilled.

If a customer has seen a car, and later calls to confirm an order. That is not distance selling.

If however the customer does not see the car but pays for the car and attends the dealership only to collect it, then that is likely to be considered distance selling.