THE AUSTRALIAN CONSUMER LAW
The schedule 2 of Competition and Consumer Act 2010, is often referred as Australian Consumer Law . ACL protects consumers from unfair trade and practices. Australian Consumer Law is based on some principles which must be followed by every organisation to protect the consumers. Those principles includes :
• Safety of the product and implementation frameworks.
• Safeguarding consumer rights while purchasing goods and service (ss 18 ACL; s 12DA ASICA).
• Punishments, Authorization forces and Consumer change choices.
• an unfair contract terms law constituting general form consumer and small business contracts (ss 23–28 ACL; ss 12BF–12BM ASICA).
The Australian Consumer Law is enforceable in all the states and territories of Australia from January 2011 . Australian Competition and Consumer Commission monitors the working of Australian Consumer Law.
Consumer Guarantee
The Australian Consumer Law accommodates statutory assurances in contracts for the supply of products and services. Under The Australian Consumer Law, consumer cannot be ignored or excluded at any cost. The Australian Consumer Law gives that a term of agreement is void, if it does not include the application of consumer guarantee under Australian Consumer Law, or the practice of rights stated under ACL or if it breaches ACL guarantees (s 64). Australian Consumer Law provide various guarantees which are applicable during purchase of goods and services. They include guarantees as to title, correspondence with description, acceptable quality and fitness for purpose: Pt 3-2, ss 51–56 . It may also depend on against whom the consumer is taking action – Supplier or the manufacturer. Before moving further, it is very important to know the meaning of ‘ consumer ‘ , ‘supply’, ‘ trade’, ‘goods and services ‘.
Consumer as stated in section 3 of Australian Consumer Law, a person who buys goods and services worth $40,000 or less, and for personal use. A person is not considered as ‘consumer’ if he purchase something for the purpose of re-sale or using it for further production (s 3(2)).
Supply is defined under the section 2 of Australian Consumer Law. Supply in terms of goods, consists selling, hiring or leasing, exchanging. And in terms of services involves providing, granting and conferring. Guarantees under ACL, are only considered if the supplier takes the business of supplying goods and services. It may not include things purchased in an auction.
In order to supply any good, seller must ensures that it meets all the required standards for example it must be of acceptable quality, must correspond to its description etc .
Goods and services Under ACL, only second hand goods and computer softwares are defined as goods. Goods which are bought privately or online are not considered as goods.
According to section 2 , any right, benefits or facilities which are or are to be provided in trade or commerce is defined as services.
Hover-boards
The Minister for Small Business and Assistant Treasurer, the Hon Kelly O’Dwyer MP, has forced an interval prohibition on the offer of risky hover-boards (connection is outer) that don’t meet the security norms determined in the boycott. There are impending flame dangers from faulty electrical hardware and substandard lithium-particle batteries in some hover-boards. The ACCC knows about six house fires in Australia since January 2016 and various occurrences of hover-boards starting, overheating or creating smoke, both in Australia and abroad. The ACCC urges shoppers to quit utilizing and charging your hover board quickly, unless you are certain it meets the wellbeing principles determined in the boycott.
Those hover boards which come under this are called for checking. And if this happens, manufacturers are primarily responsible for this. When a product fails to meet the expectations of the community regarding safety it is considered as defected product legally.
Case Study
George has recently bought a hover board and saw an article about the safety of hover boards. After reading that article, he realized that it is causing fire due to overheating or there is some problem with the battery of hover boards. He immediately decided to talk to the owner of the shop from where he bought that hover board for refund or compensation. Because he no longer wish to keep that hover board due to its safety problems. But the retailer refused to provide him the refund stating that there is nothing wrong with his hover board.
According to Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, if the product sold is not able to meet the one or more conditions of consumer guarantee, then customers are legally entitled to receive refund ,repair or compensation .
There are many responsibilities which all of us are entitled to. For example, as a consumer when George came to know that there are some problem with the hover board batteries he should immediately stop using it. As a rational customer, George contacted his retailer and discussed the matter. As a responsible seller, it was his duty to check the hover board carefully and if he was not sure he should have taken some required actions. But instead without even checking he just said that there was nothing wrong with his hover board. No doubt not all the hover board brands were facing the problem but , until and unless it is not sure that the hover board which George was using meets all the safety requirements he cannot use it.
Remedies
Various remedies are available for customers which they can apply for depending on the consequences. Under the Australian Consumer Law (s 259(1)), if any one of the Australian Consumer Law guarantees has been breached by the supplier (other than the guarantee relating to repairs and spare parts (s 58), and the guarantee relating to express warranties (s 59)) then customers can take action against the supplier. It may differ according to the circumstances and size of problem that which remedy will best suit. If the detected problem is small then consumer can ask the retailer to provide the remedy for the loss (s 259(2)). I
The seller can choose whether he want to repair the product or replace the product or whether he want to give the money back to the customer without any delay. And if the retailer fails to do so or provide equatable refund then customers can take actions against the supplier and can recover their amount (s 259(2)(b)(i)).
If the problem is major and cannot be remedied then customer can refuse or reject the product under the section 262.. Australian Consumer Law states that if the product is causing or will harm in near future consumers have the right to refund or replacement.
The conditions where buyers may not dismiss products are when (s 262(1)): time has gone since the products were supplied, inside which it is sensible to anticipate that that the problem will conform to a certification would get to be obvious to the buyer; or the buyer has lost, obliterated, or discarded the products.