What is the position regarding contracts "cancelled" owing to corona virus?

unholyangel

Manxman_in_exile said:

unholyangel said:

Manxman_in_exile said:

Also I'm not disputing anything about Unfair Contract Terms.  What I'm querying is whether, under current circumstances, we may end up in a situation where we end up in two years time saying "Oh dear!  Despite what the strict letter of the law said, those businesses should never have had to pay those refunds to everybody under the circumstances.  Look what's happened."

Well tbh that is the price of being in business - you get the benefits but you also get the liabilities (unless it's a limited company and then you may be able to escape some of those liabilities!).

Let's just hope it's not long lasting and we find a way out soon. 

You seem to be making the assumption that the price of going out of business is a price that is borne only by the business.  Normally that would be the case - but I am concerned that in the current situation, so many businesses are going to have to make refunds when it is impossible to fulfil their contracts, that when they go bust it is likely to have a much wider detrimental effect on the economy as a whole because of the sheer number involved.  I'm not certain that would be in the longer term interests of consumers.

The assumption I'm making is that a business should be run with those considerations in mind. Many people run businesses, but not all are run well and they invariably end up collapsing when their lack of financial management catches up to them. 

What you seem to be overlooking is that they are not supplying the service or goods. Therefore they are actually at a profit rather than a loss. They would be returning the consumers consideration to the consumer without ever having provided their consideration to the consumer. Their main issue is staffing costs - typically one of the biggest if not the biggest overhead a business will have. But if they're not trading then they can furlough their workers and calim government help for reduced wages.