Signing away statutory rights in a contract?

GraceCourt

I recently had cause to contact "Be Un Limited" (yes, that's the name of the company, blame their marketing people!) over the fact that the technical "requirements" for potential users of any of their broadband services didn't make sense* (which in itself is very worrying in relation to a telecoms company that should at least get the technical aspects correct, but that's by the by...).

I'm somewhat wary of a broadband provider that describes something as "needed", even when it isn't needed... and on reading through the small print in their Terms and Conditions, I've found this little gem:

Please read the following paragraph carefully as it contains a change to your statutory rights. You agree that if you order Services from Be online or otherwise at a distance then Be will immediately start work on the technical and operational elements required for provision of the Services upon the issuance of Be's order acceptance, which shall be prior to the end of any statutory cancellation period, and you acknowledge and agree that you will thereafter not have the right to cancel any Services under the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 or otherwise. At the time of acceptance we will provide you with further details of when we expect to be able to connect you to the Be network.

For a few seconds I thought that maybe this was because they were providing services rather than a product, which sort of makes sense... but then on re-reading it carefully, I saw the bit highlighted in red, which seems to remove any doubt whatsoever about their intentions!

I'm absolutely certain that no-one can be required to sign away their statutory rights in such a way, and that this would be held to be an "unfair contract term" as defined in the Unfair Contracts Terms Act 1977 and the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999.

But unless and until the company changes this, I for one won't be using their services, especially given their nonsensical "requirements", because if any dispute then arose out of whether or not the customer's equipment is suitable for use with the purchased service, then they will just point to this and claim that the customer signed away their Distance Selling rights!

Not good...

* The site clearly states for all of its services, under "WHAT YOU'LL NEED", that "Windows 98SE / Mac OS 8.6 or higher" is needed. In their response to me, they promised to add Linux to this list, but it still doesn't make sense... what's to stop me using FreeBSD with their services, over TCP/IP? Too many marketing types and not enough techies at Be Un Limited, methinks!

wealdroam

Well in my opinion they are wrong to say what they have.

However, the Distance Selling Regulations do allow for the cancellation rights for services to be removed early.

So really they are not removing statutory rights.

On page 18 of the OFT's Guide to the DSRs we can see...

Different rules apply to services where the consumer agrees that the service starts before the usual cancellation period expires. These rules are as follows.
Where you have supplied the required durable information before the service starts and the consumer agrees to the service starting before the end of the usual cancellation period, their cancellation rights will end when performance of the service starts

So in summary, if you agree for them to start providing the service before the 'normal' cancellation period ends, then the cancellation period ends when they start providing the service.

They cannot remove or override your statutory rights if you are a consumer.

An interesting question might be "when do they start to provide the service"?
Is it when they start the preparatory work, as they seem to maintain, or is it when the service is available for use?

Others will be along to discuss that point, no doubt.

baza52

GraceCourt wrote: »

* The site clearly states for all of its services, under "WHAT YOU'LL NEED", that "Windows 98SE / Mac OS 8.6 or higher" is needed. In their response to me, they promised to add Linux to this list, but it still doesn't make sense... what's to stop me using FreeBSD with their services, over TCP/IP? Too many marketing types and not enough techies at Be Un Limited, methinks!

there is nothing to stop you using any service/OS to use their services, They will only offer you support and gaurantee the service works for certain OS's
So, unless you use their suggested ways of using their service you will have no comeback if you cant use it.

Hope that makes sense, got my beer jacket on

arcon5

If it's a business-to-business service then they can contract out statutory rights in place of their fair terms and conditions. Maybe they deal primarily in the B2B sector?

bod1467

They don't - they are a consumer ISP (though they DO have some business customers).

Similar discussion here. https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3676683