Revving up for October

October 2015 brings the implementation of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 which will become the main piece of legislation on which consumers will be relying when buying a car.

Most of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 will no longer be relevant to sales made after October 2015.

The idea of course is that the new Consumer Rights Act 2015 will clarify and consolidate existing consumer law which is currently covered in more than 10 different Acts. However, to keeps things complicated, and so keep us lawyers in business, those 10 different Acts will not disappear completely and so the law in this area will still be pretty complex.

The two main Acts that are relevant to our dealers on a day to day basis are The Sale of Goods Act 1979 and The Supply of Goods (Implied Terms) Act 1973.

The Sale of Goods Act 1979 covers sales when the customer has paid the dealer for their car. The Supply of Goods (Implied Terms) Act 1973 covers sales when the customer has, what is commonly known as, bought the car on HP. In an HP sale, it is the finance company and not the dealer who have the legal liability to resolve the matter with the customer if anything goes wrong.

Both of those Acts will be chopped about come October. The Sale of Goods Act 1979 will continue to relate to business to business contracts and issues such as the passing of title in goods but, the main ‘business to consumer’ provisions will now be found in the new Consumer Rights Act 2015.

Similarly,  ‘business to consumer’ issues from the Supply of Goods (Implied Terms) Act 1973 will also now be incorporated into the new Consumer Rights Act 2015 as will the ‘business to consumer’ issues from the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977.

As we can see, much change is due upon us come October so do keep with us so we can keep you informed of what is without doubt, a major restructuring of consumer law.

Lawgistics members can get advice on the new Consumer Rights Act from the legal team.