Ian McAllister said that the so-called Distance Selling Directive, which is due to come into force in the UK and throughout Europe this year, will devastate on-line car sales.
The Directive was designed to protect consumers in business to consumer transactions, in circumstances where the individual does not come face to face with the seller. The Regulations which would introduce the Directive to the UK were expected to enter into force on 4th June this year. However, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) announced this week that, due to various concerns with the content of the regulations, the introduction will be postponed.
One reason given by the DTI was that the Directive (on which the Regulations are based) was drawn up in 1997 when “the impact of e-commerce on business to consumer sales ... was in its infancy.”
McAllister argues that cars should be exempt from the proposed rules because their value drops significantly once they have been driven for a week. He said other goods such as CDs and software had been exempted in the past by similar rules on the grounds that they could easily be copied and then returned.
Ford UK had previously launched its own “no quibble bring your vehicle back” guarantee, but had been forced to abandon it because of the excessive costs. McAllister is taking up his present concerns with the DTI.
If the DTI does amend the Regulations to exempt car sales and other products, it could lead to the European Directive being adopted in different forms throughout the European Union since some countries might not amend its terms or might make other amendments. This could mean that a consumer based in, for example, France or Spain, has more rights than one based in the UK.
See OUT-LAW.COM's article, The Distance Selling Regulations - A Practical Overview.
