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