Consumer law allows the less well informed to be ripped off!

OlliesDad

vuvuzela wrote: »

Actually, I agree a bit with cepheus on this point. I have noticed where the same stock is moved to different aisles, taking the same space with the same ranges, on a few occasions before. On asking the staff, they hadn't been puting out new ranges or create differing spaces for them, they'd just been told by their head office to move things around and were quite cross about this as it caused them more grief with customers asking where things were. They couldn't see a reason for it and one of them even guessed it was to make customers see more of the shop rather than the aisles they went to for the things they knew they needed...

Are we really suggesting that there should be laws banning shops from moving stock around the shops? What about banners on websites.. should these also be permanently the same so that customers aren't tricked into buying more than they want.

Yes it is a marketing strategy to get more exposure to customers, however it is silly to think that all marketing should be banned.

vuvuzela

OlliesDad wrote: »

Are we really suggesting that there should be laws banning shops from moving stock around the shops? What about banners on websites.. should these also be permanently the same so that customers aren't tricked into buying more than they want.

Yes it is a marketing strategy to get more exposure to customers, however it is silly to think that all marketing should be banned.

Please point out where I said anything about laws ?
I just said that IMO, moving stock around to get customers looking around more of the store is something the supermarkets do.
I certainly didn't say anything about laws against it or say anything about banning marketing.

Cornucopia

arcon5 wrote: »

I find it highly hypocritical many consumers around here are happy to manipulate the system (or seek to) to try and obtain a discount (such as abusing the 'max 2 per customer' terms; taking advantage of pricing errors; trying to force a partial refund when a price changes; amongst many more tactics), yet when a business uses an underhand tactic to maximise their profits the consumer wants laws and regulations to be put in place!

Big businesses have vastly greater resources than we do as individual citizens. As such, the entire "game" is slanted in their favour, and such loopholes that might emerge from time to time that provide a little redress are more than welcome.

That said, most companies tend to refuse to honour anything which is too far in the consumer's favour anyway.

cepheus

This old thread may seem to be informative here, is illustrates the extremes these businesses go to.

A British company working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, tracked people’s phones at Gunwharf Quays, a large retail and leisure centre in Portsmouth—not by monitoring calls, but by plotting the positions of handsets as they transmit automatically to cellular networks. It found that when dwell time (the length of time people spend in a store) rose 1% sales rose 1.3%….

Researchers are now exploring these mechanisms by observing the brain at work. One of the most promising techniques is functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which uses a large scanner to detect changes in the blood flow in parts of the brain that correspond to increases or decreases in mental activity. People lying inside the scanners are shown different products or brands and then asked questions about them…..

Often a customer struggling to decide which of two items is best ends up not buying either. A third "decoy" item, which is not quite as good as the other two, can make the choice easier and more pleasurable, according to a new study using fMRI carried out by Akshay Rao, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota. Happier customers are more likely to buy. Dr Rao believes the deliberate use of irrelevant alternatives should work in selling all sorts of goods and services, from cable TV to holidays. But what if psychological selling is done stealthily? That way lies grave perils. It is the anger not of privacy groups that retailers should fear, but of customers at being manipulated from behind the scenes.
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12792420

A final explanation for the growth in premiumisation comes from Stanford University in California. A cross-disciplinary team there has been running a series of experiments on college students in which they are offered identical products, but told they are of differing prices. When students were asked which wine tasted better - one priced accessibly or a premium-priced one - most opted for the latter. Interestingly, when the professors wired up the students to a brain scanner they observed that increases in price gave them more pleasure, even if the product itself was no different.

http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/news/search/805488/Mark-Ritson-branding-Why-brands-premium/

unholyangel

Average consumer (TYPE 1) 14.32 It is the notional average consumer whom the commercial practice reaches or to whom it is addressed that is relevant. The concept of the average consumer has been developed in the case law of the European Court of Justice. The Court has indicated that the average consumer should generally be assumed to be reasonably well informed and reasonably observant and circumspect, taking into account social, cultural and linguistic factors. This is reflected in Regulation 2 of the CPRs. ‘Average’ does not mean a statistically average consumer.

Well, that settles that argument then. Or does the OP feel their definition holds more weight than that of OFT or the courts?

IronWolf

Cepheus you clearly don't understand how the law works or is interpreted. Average in the context of the law does not mean that 50% are below it.

cepheus

unholyangel wrote: »

Well, that settles that argument then. Or does the OP feel their definition holds more weight than that of OFT or the courts?

It doesn't settle it at all. If anything it makes it worse. All they are saying is that the average of one targeted group is different to another. Moreover, one definition here assumes consumers are relatively well informed which is hardly the case! Much better if they assume consumers are NOT well informed because this represents the truth as we clearly saw with bank miselling.

Why don't you reference the article?

shaun_from_Africa

cepheus wrote: »

Moreover, one definition here assumes consumers are relatively well informed which is hardly the case! Much better if they assume consumers are NOT well informed because this represents the truth as we clearly saw with bank miselling

You are using data from two totally different periods to try and make your point.
Firstly you state that consumers are NOT well informed (this is present tense, and posting that one word in capitals still doesn't make it fact, it's still your opinion), then you refer to bank miselling, something which mainly happened a few years ago.

Nowadays, well over 80% of households in the UK have internet access, and therefore have access to the many consumer advice websites that are available and there are plenty of consumer rights programmes on the tv.
Given the availability of advice, why do you think that consumers are not well informed, and if they really are not well informed, given that all of the information is easily and freely available, whose fault is it?

Money-Saving-King

All this aside all the op seems to be going about is the fact they don't like that it falls down to the average consumer. With the deception issue how would things have to be worded for someone of extremely low intelligence to understand something? Massive 1 ft high letters? But then things would be needed to be explained so clearly desciptions of things would end up going on for ever so that wouldn't work. You'd then have the problem of the massive can of worms it would open up to con artists who could then legally rip off business's through theft or fraud left right and centre. Hasn't it occured to the op that it's done that way because there is no sensible other way of doing things as I have explained above.

What does the op actually want it doesn't seem very clear & secondly, ripped off how? Surely if someone buys something and it goes wrong they might enquire by asking friends etc about what they think, surely they'd come across someone "above" average sooner or later.

unholyangel

cepheus wrote: »

It doesn't settle it at all. If anything it makes it worse. All they are saying is that the average of one targeted group is different to another. Moreover, one definition here assumes consumers are relatively well informed which is hardly the case! Much better if they assume consumers are NOT well informed because this represents the truth as we clearly saw with bank miselling.

Why don't you reference the article?

Well actually it does settle it. You were convinced average meant statistically and that even informing consumers about their rights would only allow companies to further rip off consumers.

That simply isn't the case as evidenced by the paragraph I quoted above.

From what you're saying, you'd like the law to be idiot proof. That's just simply not possible.