How remarkably odd that on a site dedicated to consumers, it is said that the goverment ignore EU regs. Pretty much the entrety of the consumer protection legislation since the Treaty on European Union came about because of the said Regulations and Directives, word for word for the most part. The Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 is for instance a UK Statute, 2002 No.213, in force. In any case the Directives supersede National law in that a government's failure to implement may be referred by the European Commission to the European Court of Justice.

The buyer paid the postage cost. That's a consideration, but if it was fairly obvious that the £0.00 price could not have been intended, that's a valid argument. It depends on the circumstance. Before they increased the minimum start price it was not so unusual for goods to be sold on eBay for next to nothing for want of a second bid.

Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market ('Directive on electronic commerce') EUR-Lex - 32000L0031 - EN The UK implementation is the The Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 The Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 According to the OFT: http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/reports/consumer_protection/oft672.pdf

Is the proposed idea to be an undertaking in the course of which goods or services are supplied otherwise than free of charge? If so it is a legal obligation to render the name and geographic address at which the service provider is established, directly and permanently accessible to the recipients of the service and competent authorities. This is of course necessary to protect the public interest. If for instance, goods for sale are alleged to be stolen property, the need is to contact the proprietor. P.S. It's the hypocrisy of it that rattles the cage.

Chess players have a saying: The threat is more powerful than the execution. Should a seller try to be too clever by half I ask if they've a solicitor to deal with instead, please, on the basis that it is easier to discuss the legal obligations with a person well acquainted.

I am anything but a friend of eBay. I long since desisted from selling on eBay. I do not recommend to anybody to buy on eBay but the fact of the matter remains that eBay faces real competition, except that the competition lost because eBay is popular, popular as in the fact that the members continue to use the service and are willing to pay for it. [EDIT] is evidently a commercial link by the way, commercial as in goods for sale, and the service provider should provide his name and geographic address at which the service provider is established, which I did not yet notice. Play with ideas as much as you want, it is no skin of my teeth. In the mean time it is the opportunity that attracts me to a market place and when I go there to search but fail to find I would not go back, because there were already too many to choose from to the same effect.

Sellers try sites with fees a good deal less than eBay precisely because they thought it "Could be useful to save some a bit of cash", and then they go back to eBay.

How to deal with this sort of thing is call that has to made on your own judgement of the character of the seller, what he is is a position to afford, the extent of his own intelligence etcetera. As often as not they have no idea of the legal rights and duties as a matter of legal fact so it is then a matter of how to break it to them politely. If in doubt call Trading Standards now and see what they have to say. The more secure and confident you are the better your chance with a seller. That is the value of knowing the ropes.

Did you take the time to look at what is actually happening or not happening on the sites elsewhere which would dearly love to put eBay out of business? It's a theme that crops up regularly on the eBay Community Forums, where sellers turn up to moan that they tried elsewhere but ..... "Critical Mass" infers that sales actually happen.

There you go! With all said and done Ryanair's cheap flights are a cheap way to advertise, relying on word of mouth etcetera to put the idea about that their deals are the best. It is thus in their interest as much as ours that their reputation as the World leaders in doing whatver it takes to cut the cost is not overdone, with regard to whatever it takes. We survived our experience at Treviso Airport intact, because I persuaded the wife to proceed to a Hotel, confident that Rayanair would eventually have to pay for that. She was going to rough it for the night in the foyer, which would not have been fun!

Seems to me that the insurer is indeed the de facto retailer, i.e. the supplier, so you should get back to them in the first instance. A manufacturer may or may not be willing assist but they'd usually want to know who supplied their product.

I don't know about the regulation of usury, which is obviously the principle concern around here, but with regard to consumer affairs online, the general application of Distance Selling Regulations, E-Commerce Regulations etcetera, the track record of the OFT is appallingly feeble, the principle purpose being to lull the public at large into a false sense of security, believing that some sort of enforcement exists while the practical reality is that next to nothing happens.

When goods are advertised for sale at a price, it works the other way, it is the buyer who accepts the offer made by the supplier, and in principle the contract is thus enforceable; the contract is concluded when the buyer pays and it is thus a consumer contract. For the buyer to be deemed to have made the offer, the buyer would have had to specify his own particular price for the seller to agree to accept, which is what happens at a public auction for instance, where the broker thus relieved of many of the responsibilities that apply to a consumer sale. The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 thus apply, whereby Schedule 2 defines this as an unfair term: An action against the supplier would therefore depend on whether or not the seller informed the buyer of the right to cancel the contract, before the contract was concluded.

I would not know what an MP could do about this, except to seek publicity, which the Police are more or less immune to, and so they should be. The days when the Earth would move because an MP wrote a letter to complain are long gone. You need to contact the Independent Police Complaints Commission, http: //www.ipcc.gov.uk/ Police officers are esecially sensitive to the IPCC because it affects their chance of promotion through the ranks, when a complaint is upheld. No matter that a third party may have been to blame this is most definitley the resposibility of the Police in charge of the investigation.

It's a head in the clouds idea IMHO, a pipe dream. Dozens of web sites were long since started in the hope of putting eBay out of business but they never do and you'd probably not even noticed they exist for want of the critical mass, the thousands and thousands of regular visitors it takes to make it work, which is not a salient feature of this site to start with.

It is not too late to claim a refund, if that is the worry, and it is possible to claim a partial refund if the supplier is willing to negotiate, rather than be sued. According to Directive 1999/44/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 May 1999 on certain aspects of the sale of consumer goods and associated guarantees The important part of Article 3. is this: There is no direct implementation of the Directive in the UK because the purposes were already achieved for the most part by the Sale of Goods Act, but it sets out the rights and duties in a conveniently clear fashion, so is useful to invoke.

This is all so alarming, so thanks for alerting us to it. Is the possibility covered by the small print, the terms and conditions of Ryanair, that the departure time of a flight may be changed by ... how much exactly? If it allows for a change of several hours, I think it a dubious term, and if there is no such provision the alteration is what I would call a cancellation. If you sued Ryanair I doubt that a judge would stand for it as anything other than a cancellation if it exceeds the two hours specified by Article 5 whereby the re-routing, has to allow the traveller to depart "no more than two hours before the scheduled time of departure". On the other hand, if you failed to leave as much as 2 hours to spare, to connect your flights, that would be seen as reckless. UK Airlines advise travellers to check in well before the departure time.

Did Ryanair conform to the terms of the Regulations? Article 8 refers to the "passenger's original travel plan", so I would not put up with Ryanair's "point to point" nonsense. EUR-Lex - 32004R0261 - EN

It is as well to be prepared because it is not unknown for a Trading Standards Officer to say that something can't be done when it can. We had a Ryanair flight from Italy cancelled because of fog, and they failed to stick to the rquirements of the Regulations, the purpose of which is above all else to prevent the event of travellers sleeping rough in an airport foyer overnight. That is what happened to some of them, short of the ready money to book into a Hotel. Ryanair eventually refunded our extra hotel and travel cost but I never got around to complaining about the rest of it.

You should be better off to complain about a business elswhere in Europe because it gives the choice of legislation, home or abroad, and no theoretical restriction apart from the complication! Within the European Union "A consumer may bring proceedings against the other party to a contract either in the courts of the Member State in which that party is domiciled or in the courts for the place where the consumer is domiciled." (c.f. Article 16) EUR-Lex - 32001R0044 - EN In any case a European Union Regulation applies directly, as if it were the law of a member state, and section 212(2) of the Enterprise Act provides that: The laws, regulations or administrative provisions of an EEA State which give effect to a listed Directive provide additional permitted protections if— (a) they provide protection for consumers which is in addition to the minimum protection required by the Directive concerned, and (b) such additional protection is permitted by that Directive. Enterprise Act 2002 (c. 40) which applies in effect to the Unfair Trading Regulations. Section 210 of the Enterprise Act also insists that "For the purposes of a domestic infringement it is immaterial whether a person supplying goods or services has a place of business in the United Kingdom", a domestic infringement being a matter covered by UK law but not by the EU Consumer Protection Legislation. What more could you want?

It is hardly a secret that the idea is to suck in the suckers with the cheaper fares in order to steer toward an extra cost once they've taken the time off work to commit to a course of action, etcetera. The Terms of the Unfair Trading Regulations allow for a remarkable range of activities to be prosecuted as offences but the legislation is recent, already overdue when it came to force so the power that it grants is not yet so widely appreciated, which is to regret that a prosecution is not going to happen before the fuss is made to wake them all up. A good local Trading Standards office may be worth a try, if there is such a thing as a good one, rather than the OFT or the The Air Transport Users Council. if Ryanair were scared of them none of this would be happening to start with.

When was the flight booked? A consumer owns the right cancel a distance contract under section 10 of the Distance Selling Regulations, within a cancellation period of seven working days beginning with the day after the day on which the contract is concluded. Statutory Instrument 2000 No. 2334 Otherwise, you need to refer to EU Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 : EUR-Lex - 32004R0261 - EN According to Article 14 "An operating air carrier denying boarding or cancelling a flight shall provide each passenger affected with a written notice setting out the rules for compensation and assistance in line with this Regulation." Did Ryanair do that? If not, a prosecution of the offence is possible under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, in so far as "it causes or is likely to cause the average consumer to take a transactional decision he would not have taken otherwise.".