Changes For Any Business Who Sell To Consumers

Changes For Any Business Who Sell To Consumers

The new Business to Consumer Selling Regulations will come into force this Friday (13th June 2014).  If you currently sell goods or services directly to consumers, then it’s very likely that these changes will require you to amend your current documentation and business processes. If your business is involved with ‘on-premises’, ‘off-premises’ (i.e. distance, website sales) or ‘doorstep’ selling to consumers, you will need to implement these changes. Derived from yet more European Consumer legislation, the new Regulations include things such as:

• a change to the cancellation or “cooling off” period;
• a requirement to provide 24 different pieces of transaction information in a “durable medium”;
• a requirement to provide a cancellation form in a specified format;
• new rules that apply to 0845 and 0870 etc. numbers;
• a requirement that websites must make the customer actively acknowledge that placing an order incurs an obligation to pay;
• the removal of pre-checked boxes on websites and ordering forms when these pre-checked boxes incur additional costs for the customer.

Here’s a link to the new Regulations and as always, if you would like to discuss how this affects your business and your current documentation or processes, give us a call on 01242 250039.

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