Abdulalah Al-Jobore
Unit 21 - Aspects of Contract and Business Law
M2
M2 Analyse how consumers are protected in the event of breach of contract for the
supply/sale of goods or services.
In term of breaching the contract by one of the parties, the consumers will have some different laws
and regulation that provide fully protection for the consumers against businesses in the event of
breach a contract for the supply/sale of goods and services. This the consumer is considered in a
weak positions, since that the companies might have full legal department to deal with the law side
of business.
One of these laws are the Sales of Goods Act 1979 and the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982
which have been modernised, changed and replaced by the Consumers Rights Act 2015. Although,
the Sales of Goods Act 1979 has been changed, but you as a customer still have the right to be claim
under this act if the goods you have bought on or before the 30 th of September 2015 become faulty.
Also, if you have formed a legal binding contract or entered into an agreement for the goods and the
provision of services on or before 30 September 2015, the contract will be covered under the Supply
of Goods and service Act 1982. In fact, the new law, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 has been
established to help and protect the consumers as it established to simplify, strengthen and
modernise the law which also takes into account the digital contents as the consumers using the
internet for shopping as well as purchasing goods and service via internet. As this new law and the
previous laws, still providing a full protection for the consumers. Many customers will have or faced
problems with contract especially with the digital use of internet where most of service and goods
are provided on the internet. Therefore if a customer entered into a contract on or after 1 October
2015 and feel that the goods were faulty or the service that has been carried out was not
satisfactory, or the costs of goods/service are not the same than it was agreed on the contract, the
customer may have the legal right to claim compensations.
Under the Sales of Goods 1979, Section 13, the act stated that the goods under any contract of sales
that goods must match the description. This implied term suggested that goods will correspond with
that description of the goods. Usually the goods must be must look exactly as it is been described,
the description will involves such things as size, quantity, appearance, weight, ingredients and so on.
In fact, having a mismatch in the goods description will give the buyers the right to reject and refuse
to accept the goods and return them back for money refund as this will considered as an obvious
breach of contract conditions. An example of this situation is the FW Moore & Co. v Landauer & Co.
[1921] case, where FW Moore & Co agreed to supply Landauer & Co with 3000 tins of Australian
canned Fruit which will be packed in cases containing 30 tins each. However, later on when the
goods are delivered, about half of the 3000 tins were packed in cases f 24 tins, which therefore lead
to a false description and the court decided that the FW Moore & Co could reject the whole contract
and can have their refund back. Therefore, the consumers is protected when they are mislead or
have faced a misrepresentation act, as misleading descriptions in contract are known as ‘’false trade
description’ as they seller might provide you with inaccurate description about the goods/services
they are selling to you as customer. However, although section 13 of this act is protecting the
customers form faulty described goods and misleading, this act is disobeyed for these sales of goods
without a description. This means the purchased goods without a description, are not applies to
section 13 to goods sold by description, and therefore buyer has no protection.
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