Stores not accepting old notes?

biscit

pendulum wrote: »

I have already stated that the coins were used to settle a debt. The shop and carvery examples are not comparable because in a shop a sale can be refused for any reason, and then the sale will not take place - but in a carvery you have already eaten thus built up a debt, so you must pay that debt off to the waitress at the end. You are entitled to use legal tender to pay off a debt.

So... there's a petrol station off the M1 refuses to accept £50 notes.

So if you fill up a large car with £50 worth of petrol- are you in debt to the filling station, and does legal tender apply?

pendulum

There were no signs in the carvery to say £5 coins weren't accepted.

biscit

thespiderspeed wrote: »

Sounds like you have been done by the shop who give you it, guess they don't want the hassle of getting it changed.

The Stephenson £5 is of the same design series as the later Fry £5. Perhaps the person who accepted it didn't even notice it was a different design- they saw it looked about right and passed the ultra violet/pen test?

biscit

pendulum wrote: »

There were no signs in the carvery to say £5 coins weren't accepted.

Forget the carvery, I'm not having a go at you over that, I'm just asking a genuine question about the garrage. I always thought the sign was a bit dodgy.

pendulum

Ok, sorry. I was still in self-defence mode.

It's a difficult question. If a prominently displayed sign states that by drawing fuel you agree not to pay via £50 note(s) then you could have breach of contract issues if you try to. As I understand it two parties are free to agree beforehand to place restrictions on payment methods, there is no law that blocks two parties from agreeing to accept or reject different payment methods.

Ultimately if I saw such a sign then I myself would not try or insist on paying with the denomination excluded by the sign, because I don't think that's fair and wouldn't be sure the law was on my side either. The presence of the sign could be significant.

pendulum

I did reply to you but deleted it because I realised I was just repeating stuff I'd already said. We're just going to have to agree to disagree with this one.

One point. The manager was free to check the legitimacy of the coin but made no attempt. He called it monopoly money from the off and wouldn't have it any other way. Unprofessional.

haynick

I tried to use my £1 notes in Tesco the other day and was most upset to find out they had gone out of circulation in the eighties. I only got them out of a Natwest cash machine last week.

Nukumai

There's a common confusion over 'legal tender'.

Specifically, legal tender in the UK is a means of payment that, if the payment of a debt is challenged in court, will be deemed to have been extinguished if it was paid in legal tender.

A shopkeeper (or anybody else) is free to refuse legal tender in exchange for his goods, though this would not be a particularly constructive way to operate a business. Moreover (and notwithstanding that this is a civil matter) he would elicit little sympathy from the police in the event that they are called to intervene.

Of course, denominations also apply depending upon the actual coins paid over; eg. if you try to pay a debt of £1,000 with a barrow full of pennies…this is not deemed to be legal tender (though the recipient remains free to accept them).

Norman_Castle

Arguments about legal tender are allways amusing!.No complaints about the food or the service.Your dad has chosen to waste the managers time because he wants to look clever and thinks he has a point to prove.Did the manager or the police look amused?.Unlikely.

fluffnutter

I'm with nukumai... 'legal' tender or not, a shop/business etc. can refuse or accept any type of payment they want. If I want to swap a sheep for a barrel of beer in my local I can, provided the landlord wants the sheep (he's not Welsh). Similarly, if he had a cob on, he could refuse my offer of a perfectly 'legal' tenner (although he wouldn't stay in business for long).

Not sure where all these arguments about 'rights' come from...