ParkingEye v Beavis at the Supreme Court: What’s Happening This Week

trisontana

I have a felling that looking at some of the questions asked by the judges that this is a "who are the Beatles?" situation where at this level of the judiciary the judges are not familiar with such things as supermarket car parking "rules" and the hoops people have to jump through to get these fake fines cancelled.

This might be a good thing in a way for the whole PPC "industry" to be looked at by some fresh pairs of eyes.

daveyjp

Government consulted before the election so we'll see what that reveals.

Any change needs to be from legislation changes not headline grabbing Court cases.

Northlakes

This article from the Guardian demonstrates most people don't read T&C's,

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2011/may/11/terms-conditions-small-print-big-problems

The hidden term in the Beavis contract (or is it?) appears to be,

We pay money to the owner of this site in order that we may collect from you £85 if you breach any one of our conditions of use, which are totally at our discresion.
We say 'breach' only because we don't want to be liable for business rates or VAT.

Gryphon005

I'm sure most of us are guilty of just ticking the box to say that we've read the T&Cs, then hitting the 'SignUp' button.

The 'HumanCentiPad' episode of South Park (Season 15, Episode 1) illustrates the possible consequences for Kyle of just doing the above. Wikipedia article about this episode here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HumancentiPad :rotfl:

bazster

Gryphon005 wrote: »

I'm sure most of us are guilty of just ticking the box to say that we've read the T&Cs, then hitting the 'SignUp' button.

I've never seen a ParkingEye sign that had a tick box on it!

forgotmyname

Similar to the gamestation April Fools prank where they changed the terms and conditions to say that with this purchase you also surrender your soul to them.

Only 12% of the people that purchased goods actually read the terms and declined them. They were rewarded with a gift voucher.

88% gave them their soul.

Seems they were surprised that 12% actually read the terms, they were expecting much less and possibly even nobody to read the terms.

The_Deep

I read the very small type four foolscap page letting agreement I signed with Haart. A lot of it consisted of unfair terms and conditions, much of it contrary of it to an OFT v Foxtons decision in the High Court.

If T&Cs conflict with your statutory rights they are invalid.

Gryphon005

@ The Deep
I would suggest that you would be very unusual for reading this lengthy, small-print document, even more so for recognising that much of it consisted of unfair T&Cs, and further for knowing about the High Court case of OFT v Foxtons.

The T&Cs may conflict with your statutory rights, but would the average person in the street (man on the Clapham omnibus?) know this, and even if he did, would he be prepared to take a stand (like Barry Beavis) in order to enforce his rights?

In my view, Citizens Advice, Trading Standards and the Consumers' Association should become much more proactive in this area in order to assist both Consumers and Small Business against the 'take it, or leave it' Corporate stance on contracts, backed up by a team of lawyers who are prepared to swear that 'black is white' so that their side wins.

This is why it is so important that the Doctrine of Penalties is retained, although I can see an exception being made in the Makdessi case where teams of lawyers on both sides (should have) provided 'equality of contract'.

Marktheshark

The Consumer association barrister had on several occasions to remind the wandering minds of the judges that they were not there to make judgements based on wider issues, disabled parking, losses to retailers, carmageddon.

They were soley focused and tasked with this one contract and one that conflicted with EU directives in several places.

They just brushed this point away, one that will leave the avenue of the European court open.
Only on those points, but I hope the consumers association take it to Europe and force British firms to obey the EU laws put in place to protect us.
They can issue multi million pound fines to the firm refusing to abide the directives.

Grimble

Did anyone else pick up what the on what the one of the Lords said that this could be an agreement and not a contract, how would this play out?