On Saturday 30 January 2010 06:04:58 Iain Buchanan wrote: > On Fri, 2010-01-29 at 15:21 +0000, Peter Humphrey wrote: > > On Friday 29 January 2010 14:12:10 Iain Buchanan wrote: > > > what contract? > > > > I don't know how it is where you are, > > Australia :)
Ah! I'd forgotten, but I still wouldn't have known how the law works there. > > but in the UK, as I understand it, > > every sale is deemed to embody an implied contract* between buyer and > > seller. Either party is always free to specify whatever conditions he > > likes prior to the sale, and the other can accept them or not. > > That sounds like a good law! I don't think it was enacted specifically - it's one of a considerable body of common law that did as Topsy did, but over several centuries: it just growed. > Here you could take a product back if the salesperson had wrongly promised > it provided some feature, but the further the feature strays from the > average users requirements the less likely you are to get such a promise. That's reasonable, but what's to stop you from calling a supervisor over and making sure they both understood your one simple requirement? You would then be able to prove, later, that they'd broken the agreement by supplying unsuitable goods. Maybe your system isn't so different from ours after all. > I was just surprised that your wording sounded like it's common practise > to ask for slightly different terms before the sale, and have them > accepted. It isn't common practice, because of course most people just go with the flow, but I'm thinking of the case when one particular detail is especially important to you, sufficiently to warrant special measures, as it is here. There's been quite a lot of legal exploration of the possibilities over the years, and what I said is, I believe (as a non-specialist), the current, firmly established state of the art. > What happens when businesses just tell their salespeople not to agree to > extra terms? Surely there's still enough demand in the general > simple-requirement public to keep up sales? In that case you take your custom elsewhere, and let them know why. And of course you'd expect an unusual demand such as this to be sent up the line to someone who could make a decision. -- Rgds Peter. PS. (OT) This reminds me of an experience my father had in Nottingham in the 50s. He was in a branch of a national chain of pharmacists' on a Saturday afternoon; he'd chosen his product and was waiting at the till for a girl to take his money (they were always girls on a Saturday). Several of them were in a corner, gossiping and doing their nails. Eventually he announced loudly "If I'm not served soon I'll take my custom elsewhere!" They looked up, blankly, and went back to their nails. He took his custom elsewhere and forever after called Nottingham a "one-horse town". It didn't do his blood pressure any good either.
