Consumer Protection for Unfair Trading Regulations: Further guidelines

legal updates

The guidance places a requirement on dealers to adhere to the requirements of Sale of Goods law and the Supply of Goods and Services Act.

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In this article we look at a further section of the Office of Fair Trading guidelines for adhering to the Consumer Protection for Unfair Trading Regulations (CPRs). 

As we have said before the new regulations are wide reaching and take the law much further than you might imagine.

The guidance places a requirement on dealers to adhere to the requirements of Sale of Goods law and the Supply of Goods and Services Act.  The CPR’s are criminal requirements and they are making it a criminal offence if you don’t satisfy the requirements of these civil laws when a customer is seeking redress.

As a reminder, the Sale of Goods law requires the car you sell to be:

a) Of satisfactory quality
b) Fit for its purpose (eg it will to a particular weight)
c) As described

The Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 requires you to carry out repairs:

a) With reasonable care
b) With reasonable skill
c) Within reasonable (or an agreed) timescale

So literally, if you adopted a policy of refusing to honour these requirements you could be prosecuted for a criminal offence by Trading Standards.

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