"Today's The Day" Topic

The new EU Distance Selling Regulations come into effect with the main change being:

[1] Your right to cancel an order starts the moment you place your order and ends 14 days from the day you receive it.
[2] A right to a full refund within 30 days, including delivery costs charged by the seller, and to recompense for any cancellation returns if the seller hasn't informed you in writing that you must cover the cost of these returns.

Plus myHermes summaries the gov.co.uk website stating that online sellers must:

[1] List the steps involved in a customer placing an order acknowledge receipt of any orders electronically as soon as possible
[2] Take reasonable steps to allow customers to correct any errors in their order
[3] Let customers know what languages are available to them make sure customers can store and reproduce your terms and conditions, i.e. these can be downloaded and printed off
[4] Give your email address (for a web page this is hard if you want to avoid the address being spammed to death)
[5] Give your VAT number (if your business is registered for VAT)
[6] Give clear prices and delivery costs for your products

Perhaps this also will see an end to:

[1] Businesses who trade without giving a geographic address (and no a PO box doesn't count) or an email address (and no an email form doesn't count either).
[2] Large UK businesses who don't clearly state their VAT status and VAT number or trade as limited companies and don't provide their registered address and company number as required by the recent (2010?) UK Companies act.
[3] All sorts of businesses who say "we are not responsible" once we've posted the parcel and those who limit replacement for lost parcels (i.e. failure to fulfil the contract) to the value of insurance purchased with the order.
[4] VAT registered business who show prices as X + Y VAT, without showing a VAT inclusive price, which contravenes various UK fair trading regulations.

Then there's the company whos website says they are trading as a limited company when the company was dissolved years ago: very naughty.

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Martin Stephenson
Vexillia Limited :: Wargames Miniatures & Accessories
Shop | Gallery | Pike & Plunder | Facebook | Twitter

And next week Paypal will be:

increasing the time allowed for buyers to raise a Dispute from 45 days to 180 days from the date on which payment was made

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Martin Stephenson
Vexillia Limited :: Wargames Miniatures & Accessories
Shop | Gallery | Pike & Plunder | Facebook | Twitter

Editors – if I complain about my own post can someone cross post this to The Industry board? (No offe4nse Martin – it's really useful stuff!)

The VAT issue is really annoying. Perry are among the best in this regard; many others fail miserably.

The 6 month intangibles part of paypal is a bit scary. If I paint something for someone, and 5 months from now they don't like it for whatever reason, UK residents get a paypal refund. Bit extreme…

Front Rank deduct VAT for out of Europe addresses too.

thanks Bill!

Update: It's no longer 30 days

[2] A right to a full refund within 14 days, etc etc

Plus the 14 days starts from when customer provides proof of return such a post office proof of posting.

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Martin Stephenson
Vexillia Limited :: Wargames Miniatures & Accessories
Shop | Gallery | Pike & Plunder | Facebook | Twitter

Just another price increase as vendors pass along the costs of their problem children

Probably good for bigger businesses, but I'm not a business. It makes me less likely to use paypal. Back to money orders? Cash in the mail? Paypal may have overstepped here.

Does the new Paypal dispute policy apply to all transactions or only those that involve EU sellers and/or buyers?