Consumer Rights vs Vendor T & C’s

Parking_Eyerate

unholyangel said:

Parking_Eyerate said:

unholyangel said:

Parking_Eyerate said:

unholyangel said:

Manxman_in_exile said:

unholyangel said:

So must be sealed due to health & hygiene reasons & not enough that it has a seal, the seal actually has to offer hygiene/health value. 

But nowhere have I ever said that H&H needs to be the sole or primary reason for it's packaging design. Merely that, whatever form the seal takes, it has to actually protect against the hygiene/health concern - that you can't just tie a piece of string around something and claim removing the string has somehow deprived the goods of health/hygiene protection. 

(I've only skimmed the replies following my last post - I'll deal with them later - but the above post immediately caught my eye).

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Aren't you shifting your ground and backtracking from your original position in saying that? 

Contrary to "Nowhere have I ever said... " your first two posts in this very thread specifically stated that the items had to be sealed for health or hygiene reasons.  I queried whether the regulation actually said that and, so far as I can recall, you seem to have persistently defended the position that the law does say that the reason for sealing has to be for health and hygiene purposes.

To now say "But nowhere have I ever said that H&H needs to be the sole or primary reason for it's packaging design. Merely that, whatever form the seal takes, it has to actually protect against the hygiene/health concern" is a completely different proposition from the one you were originally defending.

You now seem to have shifted to saying that it is not so much the reason for the seal that is important - rather it is how effective it is as a seal for protecting health and hygiene.

That is a completely different point and has nothing to do with my original question, which was about the reason for the seal, not about whether or not it was effective for health and hygiene.

I can easily envisage a seal that is effective for the purpose of protecting health and hygiene, but which was not applied for H&H reasons in the first place. 

Are you now agreeing that the reason (or reasons) for applying the seal is irrelevant in the context of the returns exemption, (which is what I was arguing) and the real question is whether the seal is effective for health and hygiene purposes?

No, my position has not changed. If you design/choose packaging with dual purpose, and one of those purposes is H&H, then it is still for H&H reasons (even if there are also other reasons). For it to be a backtrack, I would have needed to say that the only purpose taken into consideration for it's packaging is H&H. 

It's a bit like classification of vehicles for tax purposes. If the vehicle is primarily suited (aka constructed/designed for that purpose) to carrying goods, it's a van. The van may also be constructed/designed to carry passengers, but as long as it is "primarly suited" to carrying goods, it's still a van for tax purposes. 

I apologise in advance for the length of this post but I worry that you might (unintentionally) mislead readers with this continued proposition of yours. So let’s try this; why do you think the purpose of the packaging matters at all? What would such a requirement actually achieve/deter in practical terms?

If a product is packaged in such a way that irreversibly shows if it has been opened or not, then it will still only be subject to the exemption if it is a product for which health/hygiene is a valid concern.

If a product is one for which health/hygiene is a valid concern but the packaging may nevertheless be reinstated by the consumer (e.g. your mattress ribbon notion), then there isn’t a returns issue because the consumer could (if they were that way inclined) put the packaging back together, send it back and say no more about. It may be a hygiene concern, yes, but that is then for the retailer to worry about. (If the OP could have put the unused vape tank back in a box and sent it back I doubt this thread would exist.)

So, for packaging/sealing which does show if a product has been tampered with, what actually matters in practical terms? To me, the only logical answer is whether the product is something for which health/hygiene is an issue or not. If it isn’t a product for which health/hygiene is considered relevant then the packaging is a non-issue anyway. If it is a product for which hygiene etc. matters then, so long as the packaging is able to show if the product has been opened or not, why would the contemplated purpose of packaging/sealing matter in any way? What would any such ‘intent test’ add? How would you even measure it?

One possible (hypothetical) example that occurs to me is pens like these:

https://www.ryman.co.uk/bic-4-colour-medium-blister-pack-of-2-1-free-fashion-pen

What if, before COVID, the manufacturer chose the packaging because it kept the multipack together, stopped the nibs being extended and stopped the pens getting scratched. Following COVID the retailer starts worrying that pens could be a hygiene risk because people handle them and some people put them in their mouths. Someone then buys this pack online, breaks the blister pack but realises after opening that they aren’t all ‘fashion pens’ as they had hoped so decides to return them. The blister pack functions to show that the pens have been opened and it can’t be closed again. The retailer refuses the return because of hygiene concerns (since information isn’t the point of contention let’s assume that the requisite information was provided as needed).

Should it matter at all that the packaging wasn’t chosen for hygiene reasons, or should the (only) pertinent issue be whether any hygiene concerns associated with pens are severe enough post-COVID that the pens can’t be re-sold once opened? If you maintain that the purpose(s) of the packaging must still matter, can you clearly explain why? Further, how would you set about trying to prove that the manufacturer hadn’t thought about hygiene when choosing to use blister packs in the first place? (My view, as I’m sure you can guess, is that the purpose of the packaging wouldn’t and shouldn’t matter and the longer this discussion continues the more I think that any reference to the intent of packaging in the legislation was omitted deliberately.)

Bringing it back to vape products, even if it were a requirement of the regulation how, in practical terms, could the OP set about arguing that the purpose(s) of the cellophane packaging around the vape tank didn’t include hygiene protection? I think you could only realistically do that by arguing that vape tanks are not products for which health/hygiene is a significant concern. So, again, to all intents and purposes I consider it would nevertheless come back to the nature of the goods/product....

OP - it is apparent that some people see things quite differently but ultimately it is, of course, only for you to decide how you might want to approach the retailer (in case you are still thinking of getting back to them again). Personally, I think any argument regarding the ‘intent’ of packaging is a complete non-starter and the only relevant question is whether there may be serious (enough) hygiene concerns related to re-using vape tanks.

I've not read the waffle but the purpose matters because the goods need to be of a type that require sealing for hygiene/health reasons!

So as I said, ibuprofen requires sold in blister packs. Without that seal, it wouldn't be able to be sold because of the health risk it would pose. 

In the simplest sense, the exemption is for sealed goods, which are unsuitable for return once opened (due to health/hygiene protection). It is not an exemption for all goods that cause a h&h concern, if the goods are sealed. 

To be honest it wouldn’t surprise me if you haven’t read my ‘waffle’, given the level of critical analysis in your previous posts.

Ibuprofen doesn’t have to be sold in blister packs. It is sold in blister packs but that isn’t the only way it could be sold hygienically . As alluded to earlier, I believe the original driving force behind development of the pharmaceutical blister pack was dosage monitoring, not hygiene.

The above said, the first sentence of your last paragraph actually seems to be correct. The exemption is for sealed goods which are unsuitable for return once opened. It is the nature of the goods which is the material concern.

Part of the purpose of a blister pack is to make it tamper proof, including from small children under 5 as a requirement of human medicine regs (health protection). Another is to preserve the medications shelf life/composition. 


So if you're saying ibuprofen don't need to be sold in sealed packaging, I'd ask you where you're buying this pick'n'mix of loose individual pills, because it won't be the UK given our requirements on packaging of medication. 

No, that wasn’t what I was saying and I wonder if you are confusing ibuprofen with aspirin/paracetamol:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/medicines-packaging-labelling-and-patient-information-leaflets#child-resistant-packaging-for-medicines

I think it raises an interesting point though, if other legislation necessitates a particular style of packaging for certain products how does that interplay with the CCRs? Can any pharmaceutical products ever be returned anyway?