Fair Trading

The Trading Standards Service seeks to ensure that the residents of the county borough get a ‘fair deal’ by enforcing a wide range of legislation relating to pricing, consumer credit and the description of goods, services and property.

Officers check the prices and description of goods and services offered by local businesses and investigate complaints from the public where they believe they have purchased misdescribed goods, services or been overcharged.

Fair trading covers a wide area of consumer protection law such as the Property Misdescriptions Act, Consumer Credit Act and many more Acts of Parliament besides. The primary purpose of this type of legislation is to ensure 'truthfulness of trade' thus preventing consumers being misled during contractual negotiations for goods and services.

We ensure that all goods and services are correctly described, that goods are price marked and that the prices are not misleading, and that traders comply with consumer credit, hallmarking, estate agents and trade marks legislation.

This work can include:

Checking garages to make sure that they correctly service or repair cars

Testing clothes to check that they are really cotton and not synthetics.

Other examples of consumer fraud include the investigation of goods for sale by traders pretending to be private individuals and the sale of pirate or counterfeit computer software, clothes, music, videos and DVDs.

How would I spot a copy?

This can sometimes be very difficult as criminal traders are becoming very good at counterfeiting. The Trading Standards service suggests that you use the following tips to spot suspect goods:-

Where is it sold?

Is this a place where designer goods would normally be found?  If you saw a Rolex watch at a car boot sale, chances are it’s a counterfeit.

How much does it cost?

Most designer goods sell at quite high prices, if a good is much cheaper than in authorised stockists, it probably is a copy.

Is the quality comparable with the original? Look at the clarity of the tag, the finish on seams and embroidery.  Any defects probably should start alarm bells ringing.

Remember – if it seems to good to be true, it probably is.

Property Misdescriptions Act 1991

This Act is designed to regulate those persons in the course of estate agency or property development business who falsely describe or make misleading statements in relation to land. This includes amongst other things descriptions in relation the address and location of a property, room sizes, easements and maintenance charges.