Missing deliveries from US retailer - UK consumer rights..?

DullGreyGuy

ernie-money said:

DullGreyGuy said:

twopenny said:

Also a surprising number of sucessful British companies have been taken over by traders abroad.

Not sure the relevance for two companies founded in the US?

twopenny said:
I had enough of this nonsense a long time ago and now check where a business is based, go for UK with an address that I can walk into and deal with if necessary - or send a recorded post letter to.

Well the Timberland website and shops in the UK are VF Northern Europe Services ltd incorporated in Scotland with physical stores you can walk into. 


Crocs too have UK stores and a UK based company that operates the stores. Their website however seems to operate from the Netherlands. 

Working out where someone is based isn't always 100% straight forward. Plenty of far east operators of verging on scam websites will list a UK based company and UK based address but it's just a forwarding address. With multinational companies like the forementioned they operate in many different countries and many will have a UK entity even if they are founded overseas. 

Unfortunately being UK based with a UK address doesn't automatically mean a sole trader knows all the rules and legislation they should follow, some will also use forwarding address services, some are just buying cheap tat from overseas and rebranding it to themselves to sell as a "designed in the UK" product etc. 

This is enlightening! I always assumed that if a retailer is UK based (ie a UK address on the website) UK consumer laws would apply, but I guess I'll be more cautious in future and check T's & C's to make sure. I never thought ordering a pair of boots would be such a minefield!

First of all, for clarity, VF Corporation is the parent company of Timberland, they also own Vans, NorthFace, Kipling and a series of other companies I've never heard of. Clearly they've decided it's better to have a single UK entity for all their brands than operate a company for each of their brands overseas. There are overheads with having different companies but also some may ask who the hell is VF and be put off from buying. 


There is a complex set of rules in determining which legal jurisdiction applies to a contract depending on the locations of the entities, nature of them and what their terms say. If it is a UK entity, like VF Northern Europe, and you are a UK based private buyer then your relevant local jurisdiction will apply (note there isn't a "UK" jurisdiction but 3 - N.Ireland, Scotland and England & Wales). This could be adjusted by the terms though to the one which applies to where the company is based (eg some England based companies make all sales England & Wales to avoid the need for Scots law experts etc) but unlikely to be changed to somewhere unrelated, eg NY. 


Its only one of the considerations though, if you look at the many threads on here where someone thought they were buying from a UK company but the goods were shipped from China then technically English law applies but enforcement will be next to impossible as there is nothing physically inside the UK. 

ernie-money

DullGreyGuy said:

ernie-money said:

DullGreyGuy said:

twopenny said:

Also a surprising number of sucessful British companies have been taken over by traders abroad.

Not sure the relevance for two companies founded in the US?

twopenny said:
I had enough of this nonsense a long time ago and now check where a business is based, go for UK with an address that I can walk into and deal with if necessary - or send a recorded post letter to.

Well the Timberland website and shops in the UK are VF Northern Europe Services ltd incorporated in Scotland with physical stores you can walk into. 


Crocs too have UK stores and a UK based company that operates the stores. Their website however seems to operate from the Netherlands. 

Working out where someone is based isn't always 100% straight forward. Plenty of far east operators of verging on scam websites will list a UK based company and UK based address but it's just a forwarding address. With multinational companies like the forementioned they operate in many different countries and many will have a UK entity even if they are founded overseas. 

Unfortunately being UK based with a UK address doesn't automatically mean a sole trader knows all the rules and legislation they should follow, some will also use forwarding address services, some are just buying cheap tat from overseas and rebranding it to themselves to sell as a "designed in the UK" product etc. 

This is enlightening! I always assumed that if a retailer is UK based (ie a UK address on the website) UK consumer laws would apply, but I guess I'll be more cautious in future and check T's & C's to make sure. I never thought ordering a pair of boots would be such a minefield!

First of all, for clarity, VF Corporation is the parent company of Timberland, they also own Vans, NorthFace, Kipling and a series of other companies I've never heard of. Clearly they've decided it's better to have a single UK entity for all their brands than operate a company for each of their brands overseas. There are overheads with having different companies but also some may ask who the hell is VF and be put off from buying. 


There is a complex set of rules in determining which legal jurisdiction applies to a contract depending on the locations of the entities, nature of them and what their terms say. If it is a UK entity, like VF Northern Europe, and you are a UK based private buyer then your relevant local jurisdiction will apply (note there isn't a "UK" jurisdiction but 3 - N.Ireland, Scotland and England & Wales). This could be adjusted by the terms though to the one which applies to where the company is based (eg some England based companies make all sales England & Wales to avoid the need for Scots law experts etc) but unlikely to be changed to somewhere unrelated, eg NY. 


Its only one of the considerations though, if you look at the many threads on here where someone thought they were buying from a UK company but the goods were shipped from China then technically English law applies but enforcement will be next to impossible as there is nothing physically inside the UK. 

Very informative - thank you for taking the time to respond!

Grumpy_chap

ernie-money said:

It's just seemed a strange coincidence that both customer service agents used American phrases 

I don't think that any conclusions about where a call centre is based can be drawn from accents or specific phraseology that may be used.

I understand that many people for whom English is not their first language can learn a lot of their English from watching the movies, so American accents and phraseology dominates.  Probably more enjoyable for the individual than watching endless repeats of the Queen's Christmas Message.

George Bernard Shaw can probably comment more eloquently than I: 
"England and America are two countries separated by the same language"

DullGreyGuy

Grumpy_chap said:
George Bernard Shaw can probably comment more eloquently than I: 

"England and America are two countries separated by the same language"

Well we cannot even agree on what he said, NY Times has "same language" whereas the Guardian says "common language"

Grumpy_chap said:
I understand that many people for whom English is not their first language can learn a lot of their English from watching the movies, so American accents and phraseology dominates.  Probably more enjoyable for the individual than watching endless repeats of the Queen's Christmas Message.

Wife's not a native speaker but for her it was more music and TV than movies. The former were in English, TV had subtitles. Most movies on the other hand were dubbed so you didnt hear the English/American 


Its not a uniquely UK/US problem though, when the BiL visited we went to a tapas restaurant who's normal menu is in Spanish (from Spain), he had to ask for the English menu because names for many food items are different. So as in the UK we'd have prawns in the US you'd be having shrimp, in Spain you'd have gambas and latin america its camarones

Thankfully have re-educated the wife who can now pronounce aluminium, yoghurt and tomato correctly

molerat

At work I used to deal with a Dutch company and by their language I would have said the person I dealt with regularly was American but they were 100% Dutch born and bred.

user1977

I remember somebody having trouble getting a Spanish hotel to understand that they wanted a "cot" for their bedroom - eventually dawned on them that the receptionist had learned American English so the magic word was "crib"...