On the 1st of October the new Consumer Rights Act came into force. The new Act replaces three major pieces of consumer law - but what does this mean for you, the consumer? Barbara Davies - a Senior Consumer Advice Caseworker at QualitySolicitors Devonalds - gives her thoughts on the new Act and outlines some of the changes it brings:
Read more...The sun is out. You’re sporting a kiss-me-quick hat and the calorie controlled diet has been overtaken by fish and chips and ice cream. Your children have created a civil engineering masterpiece of a sandcastle and you’re halfway through your second holiday novel. What can possibly go wrong?
Read more...The sun is out. The children are off school, there’s cricket on the TV and Pimms in the fridge. You’re eating barbecue food so often that you’ve forgotten how to turn on your kitchen hob. Thanks to rare hours of sunshine, your freckles are much closer together and in danger of resembling a tan. What can possibly go wrong?
Read more...Unless you are a lawyer, or some strange legal hanger on, the news that the Legal Services Board (LSB) has formally asked the government to regulate will writing has probably passed you by. Most normal people do not think about regulation (although I confess I have no evidence for this assertion) and if they do, they probably assume it is already there. They aren’t likely to waste valuable minutes reading about it when the future queen of England has been snapped in only her bikini.
Read more...I know I’m a bit late. I know you already have some, most of which you’ve probably forgotten or are at least ignoring. I know the start of the new year seems an awfully long time ago. But it is still January (just) and because my last post was about complaints, I thought it would only be fair to give you a chance to avoid them. Most should be glaringly obvious, but you’d be surprised.
Read more...We Brits like to complain. We are renowned for moaning about the weather (with good cause), unreliable trains (ditto) and bad service in restaurants (quite often ditto). Mostly, however, the complaining comes to naught because it is done in private to our family and friends and nowhere near the people who might be able to do something about it.
Read more...My first LP was Rio by Duran Duran. At least, that’s what I like to tell people, conveniently overlooking the Bucks Fizz album I had bought a year earlier. Before then most, if not all, of the music I listened to was recorded onto cassette tapes from Sunday night’s Top 40 on Radio 1, complete with inane voiceovers and sudden pauses. To be honest, I can’t remember if I bought it in HMV, but I know I didn’t buy it on the internet because it barely existed.
Read more...Well that’s it for another year then. Thank goodness. Christmas isn't exactly the most relaxing time of year. Cooking Christmas dinner for six, including one helpful vegetarian (me) in my teeny tiny kitchen is no mean feat; and then there’s the enduring mess of wrapping paper, boxes, ribbon, gifts without a home and various bits of half eaten food to contend with.
Read more...People are not always entirely rational. Of course we’re not. We have a right brain as well as a left brain, or at least most of us do, and for some of us the emotional part seems to dominate quite a lot of the time. Nonetheless, sometimes our actions appear to make little sense whichever part of the brain is in charge.
Read more...‘Trust’ and ‘lawyer’ are not words you would automatically put together, but the incomprehensibility of legal language may leave you no choice. Worryingly, while you would expect consumers to trust lawyers a lot less than they do nurses, doctors or teachers they also trust lawyers less than they used to.
Read more...I seem to have a habit of working for organisations that then very inconveniently change their name after I've left. First it was The New Opportunities Fund (although to be fair no-one knew who they were even when I worked there), then the Consumers Association (now it’s all Which?) and now it's law firm Russell Jones & Walker (RJW to their friends).
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