Taking Red Letter Days to court....

System

Moglex wrote: »

There seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding here. Marks and Spencer still issue both vouchers and cards and the vouchers do not have any expiry date. This is true of the vouchers of many other companies.

Yes but when you pay with vouchers instead of giving you the change in vouchers they load it onto a gift card. They are phasing vouchers out and replacing them with gift cards which like rld have perfectly fair expiration dates

Elle7

I have some La Senza vouchers here right now, and a Gift Card. Both have the '24 month rule' printed on them on the reverse, in quite small writing, but it is there. It's in the same place as the person giving the card writes the amount loaded onto it.

Regardless, I'd like to see how this gets on in court. It'll be an interesting precedent, if the judge agrees with the OP.

hcb42

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2006/apr/29/consumernews.moneysupplement

an old article.

I recall vaguely setting up gift vouchers for sale, which were paper and equivalent to cash, many years ago now, (for a hotel group) and somewhere in the back of my mind I recall that these do not normally have expiry dates as cash itself does not have an expiry date, and there was some legal precedent to this.... For the consumer, why would I buy my sister £100 of hotel vouchers which expire after a year when I could just give her £100 and she could book it any time.

Of course we all know vouchers for a specific product or service do normally do have an expiry date on them - and for the organisations this money does eventually need to accounted for in the books - (and effectively profit if they are not redeemed). Although the largest hotel experience voucher provider that I am aware of generally will authorise a bit of leeway, and provided the hotel agrees in advance, vouchers can be extended. THe other reason for the expiry date is there to protect the cost i.e suppliers will not want to be receiving less money if the price has gone up in the meantime..

With providers such as RLD, I dont think it would be possible for them to book in advance x experience vouchers at £y, simply as many vouchers can be used in several venues , and indeed there are many experience providers selling these, so effectively you would buy the voucher, recipient would then book and redeem it at the venue, and venue would reclaim the payment, less commissions from the gift experience voucher. So it will certainly be making its money from both commissions and expired vouchers. Not sure what the situation would be if a voucher was for one venue only.

I can see where the OP is coming from, although a quick surf around google and it seems to be that the fairness seems to be the date featured prominently in the collateral. I know from buying and sending these in the past, that this is always the case.

interesting, will see how it pans out.

Zedicus

Jeff_Bridges_hair wrote: »

Directly from HMV website
M&S Gift Card T&Cs
And From Boots
So plainly gift cards of this kind have an expiry date if they are not used for 24 consecutive months.
Though It is worth noting that modern gift cards like these and others can be topped up, but again - an expiry date is applied.
So now that we have established that other companies can keep your money if you do not use a gift card within a certain amount of time - what is the difference between them and RLD?

goater78 wrote: »

Yes but when you pay with vouchers instead of giving you the change in vouchers they load it onto a gift card. They are phasing vouchers out and replacing them with gift cards which like rld have perfectly fair expiration dates

Jeff_Bridges_hair wrote: »

Gift card/Voucher it doesnt matter in what form they are in they clearly have an expiry date in their T&Cs.

Jeff_Bridges_hair wrote: »

And also I would like to add that the high street vouchers that you can buy from HERE also have an expiry date

A few posters here seem to have a very fundamental misunderstand of the law. "A lot of other people are doing it" is in no way a defence in law. Anyone who takes money and issues some proxy for that money is on very shakey ground, legally, if they take that money for themselves. They may get away with it in the main, firstly because most people will have the same blindly ignorant view that T&C clauses are inviolate and thus simply accept their loss, and, secondly, because the companies concerned will generally capitualte and return the money as a 'goodwill gesture' because the last thing they want to happen is for that part of their business model to be tested in court. Far cheaper to hand back money to a small percentage of persistent customers than to have the practice declared illegal.

A further misunderstanding is demonstrated by those who just keep parroting: "But it's clearly written in the terms and conditions". It may well be but can you not understand that that is precisely what the unfair terms legislation is there for? Can you not see that there would be little point in having unfair terms legislation if it could be defeated because something was stated in the terms and condition?

When making a judegement the judge will try to balance the degree to which the customer has been disadvanted with the degree to which the business would be disadvantaged if the term was struck out. For example, if you have paid a premium for next day delivery, a term that states that no compensation will be payable if delivery is delayed by severe weather would probably be allowed to stand. A term that said delivery could be delayed by up to a week without compensation if the company could not fill up a van almost certainly would not.

Most of the people on this thread seem to accept that this is a matter that will need to be tested in court (assuming the company allows it to go that far). A small minority seem - despite not identifying themselves as lawyers - to be absolutely certain that the case is without merit. That certainty in itself seggests that they have very little knowledge of the English legal system.

Jeff_Bridges_hair

Indeed Zedicus. Though If you read my first gambit on this subject you will indeed see that I did say that this is something that needs to be tested in court. The rest of my postings are actually countering the arguement that a few posters(esepcially those that have refrianed from reposting what I wrote above yet managed to click the thanks button for your post) claiming that vouchers/gift cards that they have/had do not have an expiry date at all yet 2 minutes on the stores websites and I found all of them do have a time limit.

You also dont have to be any sort of Lawyer to put your opinion acrross though you seem to only direct this at those who are posting about it being in the T&Cs yet not at those who claim the T&Cs are unfair. Just how are you seprating who is and is not a lawyer then? By what benchmark are you quantifying the conflicting posts between who may or may not be a lawyer? Truth is you dont know.

Azari

Jeff_Bridges_hair wrote: »

The rest of my postings are actually countering the arguement that a few posters(esepcially those that have refrianed from reposting what I wrote above yet managed to click the thanks button for your post) claiming that vouchers/gift cards that they have/had do not have an expiry date at all yet 2 minutes on the stores websites and I found all of them do have a time limit.

I refrained from posting because it was becoming pointless. Partly because people were lying and partly because certain people were so desperate to make their point that they continually sidetracked the discussion by ignoring facts about vouchers and insisting on talking about 'Gift Cards' which have different rules.

I have Boots vouchers on my desk. I have stated that there is no evidence of an expiry date on them. This is from the 'Boots' page on 'Voucher Express':

Do Boots Gift Vouchers have an expiry date?

Your Boots Gift Vouchers do not have an expiry date.

It doesn't get much clearer than that and so your statement "found all of them do have a time limit" is a simple lie.

(You can also find plenty of 'no expiry date' M&S vouchers on ebay, which backs up my experience with these.)

Further, as Zedicus so accurately points out: "A lot of other people are doing it" is in no way a defence in law.

Zedicus

Jeff_Bridges_hair wrote: »

The rest of my postings are actually countering the arguement that a few posters(esepcially those that have refrianed from reposting what I wrote above yet managed to click the thanks button for your post) claiming that vouchers/gift cards that they have/had do not have an expiry date at all yet 2 minutes on the stores websites and I found all of them do have a time limit.

That has already been demonstrated to be untrue. I checked ebay and there are a lot of non-expiring M&S vouchers available so it is confirmed they have been issued.

You also dont have to be any sort of Lawyer to put your opinion acrross though you seem to only direct this at those who are posting about it being in the T&Cs yet not at those who claim the T&Cs are unfair.

Not sure where you get that from but I'm happy to confirm that ANYONE who makes a dogmatic statement about the outcome of some future court case is demonstrating a considerable degree of both ignorance and arrogance. The main thrust of my post, which you seem to have ignored, was that:

(a) Writing something in the terms and conditions, no matter how clearly, is no defence to a claim for unfair terms - how could it be?

(b) The fact that 'everyone' does it (even if they don't) is, again, no defence in law.

These seem to be the two main planks of the argument that those who claim there is no case. And, please note, that there is a fundamental difference between those who say "There is no case", who are effectively judging the issue themselves, and those who say "There is a case", who are effectively saying that a court needs to decide the issue. So your implicit accusation of lack of even-handedness does not really hit the mark.

magenta22

Oh is this still being 'argued' about?

Look there is an expiry date on the voucher. it is on the voucher and the website.

You get at least 9 months to book the experience which is plenty of time to do so.

The question has not been answered as to why there shouldn't be an expiry date properly.
Nor has the question of did the OP purchase it themselves or was it bought for them?

Zedicus

Azari wrote: »

insisting on talking about 'Gift Cards' which have different rules.[/COLOR]

They may have different rules but they are not exempt from scrutiny under unfair terms and conditions legislation. My guess, however, is that you will not hear of any court case examining these terms because the companies involved would rather make occasional 'goodwill' payments to persistent customers then risk a court examining the terms and possibly cutting off a useful revenue stream.

magenta22 wrote: »

Look there is an expiry date on the voucher. it is on the voucher and the website.

Please read some of the above posts. What would be the point of having unfair terms and conditions legislation if "it's on the voucher and website" could form a valid defence? Obviously the terms must be written down somewhere before they can be examined for fairness. It really is hard to see why that is so hard to understand.

System

Azari wrote: »

I refrained from posting because it was becoming pointless. Partly because people were lying and partly because certain people were so desperate to make their point that they continually sidetracked the discussion by ignoring facts about vouchers and insisting on talking about 'Gift Cards' which have different rules.

I have Boots vouchers on my desk. I have stated that there is no evidence of an expiry date on them. This is from the 'Boots' page on 'Voucher Express':

Do Boots Gift Vouchers have an expiry date?

Your Boots Gift Vouchers do not have an expiry date.

It doesn't get much clearer than that and so your statement "found all of them do have a time limit" is a simple lie.

(You can also find plenty of 'no expiry date' M&S vouchers on ebay, which backs up my experience with these.)

Further, as Zedicus so accurately points out: "A lot of other people are doing it" is in no way a defence in law.

Why should gift cards and gift vouchers have different rules? They both offer exactly the same service and so in principle are the same thing. The only reason they came up was you made one of your usual ridiculous sweeping statements about how M&S don't operate the same as RLD (therefore claiming RLD were in the wrong). The Gift cards prove you're wrong.