There is a precedent in that the McLibel 2 even though they lost against McDonalds they won damages against the UK & one of the main concerns of the EU court was that legal aid was not available to them. Therefore the trail was not fair & a clear breach of Article 6

 

They also criticised the law in that there was little protection for those who spoke out against corporations which affected the everyday lives of citizens & the environment. They thought our libel laws too erroneous. Of course in this regard they are wrong its the Judgments that have been too erroneous

As the Banks have said it is in the interest to take it higher and back then Mclibel2 ATE's were not so popular...can't ATE be used by Walls

m2ae

300 caggers 2000 visitors says it all.... this site is losing its power!!!

 

what do we do????

hey well im just sitting here doing nuthin important and watchin nurses.

hope all is aok in the land of the living.

Word as it mateys that the milk suply is being restricted in some areas due to a stopage in delivery of some kind.

Heyn ut you know this link shud keep the mind focused and distracted for a while you think?

OK whuts mae2 confused about were all here to help?

The FSA has backed earlier guidance issued by the OFT and confirmed that, in its view, ‘read and understood’ terms in consumer contracts are unfair. The FSA said that including a contractual term or a tick box on a website asking a consumer to confirm that they had read and understood the contract would be unfair and in breach of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations. Companies should not reject customer complaints because they had ticked a box saying that they had read and understood the contract. The FSA said:

“A declaration requiring consumers to agree that they have read and understood a contract is, in our view, unfair. This is because the statement may not be true and may not reflect what has actually happened. Consumers may not have either read or understood the contract and so are not in a position to declare that they have in fact done so. In this instance, the declaration is effectively meaningless and does not reflect the circumstances in which the particular consumer signs their contract.

The law requires consumers to be given an opportunity to examine all the terms in a contract.

A declaration of this nature could be used by a firm to claim that it gave customers an opportunity to read a contract when it did not actually do so. The firm could argue that because a consumer has signed to say that they have read and understood a contract, this means the firm has fulfilled its obligation to allow the consumer to examine all the terms. This may not in fact be true. Therefore the use of a declaration in this way is unfair.

It is preferable for ‘have read and understood declarations’ instead to give a clear warning to consumers that they should read and understand terms before signing them and that consumers should ask questions if they do not understand any terms”

The FSA thought that it was fair to ask consumers to make declarations relating to matters which were within their own knowledge, such as personal information including age, gender and address.

The OFT has already issued guidance which makes it clear that asking consumers to declare that they have read and understood an agreement is unfair.

“Declarations that the consumer has read and/or understood the agreement give rise to special concerns. The Regulations implement an EU Directive saying that terms must be clear and intelligible and that consumers must have a proper opportunity to read all of them (see Part IV). Including a declaration of this kind effectively requires consumers to say these conditions have been met, whether they have or not. This tends to defeat the purpose of the Directive, and as such is open to serious objection.

In practice consumers often do not read, and rarely understand fully, any but the shortest and simplest contracts. It might be better if they tried to do so, but that does not justify requiring them to say they have done so whether they have or not. The purpose of declarations of this kind is clearly to bind consumers to wording regardless of whether they have any real awareness of it. Such statements are thus open to the same objections as provisions binding consumers to terms they have not seen at all.

Much more likely to be acceptable is a clear and prominent warning that the consumer should read and understand the terms before signing them.”

Click here to read the FSA’s statement

Click here to read the OFT’s guidance

Patrickq1,

Very good can you put the above in the PPI forum too as I believe it also applies there also.

PF

Well how long has this been going on for then and cannot this be applied to Consumer contracts???....especially when contracts are NOT cancellable

Yes It Will Be Applied To Consumer Contracts ,if You Read The Full Eu Data Protection Act Its In Their,you Can Use This Eu At The Moment But It Means The Supreme Court Throwing It Out First And I Do Not Think They Would Dare ?

Patrickq1

I can see scenarios where consumer credit agreements or other complicated commercial agreements are executed on lenders premises in front of an ''impatient'' representative and how this would apply...but not so much for s62's where cooling off periods are allowed or other contracts where ''sufficient time is allowed for reading and understanding the t&c's..but even so there are many cancellable contracts that have been signed within the cooling off periods that really needed expert advice before execution...

I gonna copy and paste that extract Patrick onto my word document very good of you thanks...

Consumer Credit Agreements usually state...''sign this only if you wish to be legally bound'' surely any signing after seeing that must indicate the customers intention still to be bound

The Full Eu Data Protection Act

Purely for the record; and not to be digested at this time of night, where might I find this exceedingly useful document and is it in English? - don't fancy trying Flemish at ANY time of day.

Am I missing something here? Either a term is fair or unfair. What bearing can it have on the question if you said you understood the term?

Am I missing something here? Either a term is fair or unfair. What bearing can it have on the question if you said you understood the term?

Is the question not 'is the term fair or not?' and 'is the term fair or not under the regulations?', though?

From Aequitas

Am I missing something here?

Just when I thought it safe to put the razor blades away!

If, albeit in this instance only, FSA is acting in my interest then who am I to query it?

Read/understood declarations confer no benefit on the supplier and are therefore pointless. Since they serve no purpose it is equally pointless to object to them.