How can we bring consumer law into the digital age?

There are many phone and tablet Apps that do not function as advertised. Many comments ask for a monetry return but, of course, none is offered. Even trying to contact some of the software developers is impossible as they don’t respond.
Apple especially needs to re-appriase their long winded Terms and Conditions. How many people read them through properly? I have tried, given up and returned later as the blurb is so long. There should be a system that shows clearly the main points at a glance.
Which? T & Cs are luckily not as big a read as some others!

The problem with the digital revolution is that every protection you give the consumer is also a crowbar that criminals (Especially those who don’t even regard what they are doing as crime) can use to rip off the supplier.

I have no solution to the conundrum, but I suspect that if you make things too easy on the consumer and/or criminal, a lot of what might be extremely popular media will never see the light of day.

I agree with this but think the length of time should be 60 days as not everyone is able to have time to sort something out there and then due to illness, work, etc – so I think things should be fairer for the consumer as businesses have had it too easy for too long. I recently had to take a company (Comfy-Living), to court to get a refund for a bed that broke after only 3 weeks but it took me until 30 days to work out how to contact them through Amazon, the site I’d bought it on. The company refused to refund me – which when it finally went to court, nearly a year later – it took that long! – the judge said they should never have made me take them to court and they were acting illegally under the sale of goods act to refuse me a refund – but it’s not clear on any website. The government needs to pass a further sale of goods act telling people they are entitled to a refund if they want one if something breaks or goes wrong. Currently there’s this stupid “repair, replacement or refund” so companies aren’t giving the refund – that needs changing as there are so many bad companies out there.

One way to overcome some of the difficulties experienced when buying digital products is for the vendor to be forced to publish a formal procedure called “what to do in the event of a problem” this will at least enable contact to be made swiftly. In most case the solution to a download problem can easily be fixed by a “replacement”. If a replacement is refused it points to a somewhat “iffy” vendor who should be prosecuted. Making it easy to prosecute would stop most of the problems anyway as these vendors rely on inertia and the hassle to actually accomplish a prosecution.

The only time I’ve returned software was when using Amazon to buy the image editing software “Lightroom”, it would not load- Once informed Amazon made the return and refund immediately,fantastic service (wish I could say the same of the Yodel pickup service)
Moral- for me, stick to Amazon

I purchased a ‘new up-to-date’ map of Western Europe for my Tom Tom satnav before travelling in France. While driving on a main road that I had used two years previously, the satnav showed me in the middle of featureless countryside (no road present). Many other examples of the map being long out of date occurred. Tom Tom insisted that it was the most recent mapping. We need accurate descriptions of what we are paying for with this kind of software.

For about two months, everyone in my area has suffered from extremly low Broadband speeds and telephone [landline] problems. Several days, I would be without internet connection at all and also the telephone was so bad I had to continue some conversations by mobile phone. I contacted Sky, my ISP, who virtually said the fault was mine, had me checking telephone sockets and trying a borrowed phone. They eventually agreed that the fault was external but this didn’t stop subsequent Sky operators trying to put me through the same loop to check the sockets and lines when I kept complaining
Eventually I found out that the fault was caused by Openreach and their cables by contacting my local MP and a Welsh Assembly Member, even though I told Sky where the trouble lay, the seemed to ignore it.
I am sure that I and others should be entitled to compensation for “denial of services” from Sky, they take my money. I have asked Sky for compensation but I am not holding my breath until I get a response from them.

A big problem in defining this legislation is the fact that a great many of the customers do not take the time to identify what they are buying and exactly what it does and how, indeed many do not know where to start. Many choose their packages on reputation, appearance or price rather than on whether it can and do the tasks they need it to do. How many actually know what they want it to do before they buy it? This lack of know how and education is one of the major reasons why the problem still exists, have you ever tried to find out how non-experts can learn about such matters? There are few, if any places to go and learn this type of thing.

It is likely to prove very difficult to document and agree how a software product is intended to work and whether the real problem is that it doesn’t do what it should, or doesn’t do what the customer thought it would do.
(from a very experienced supporter of people choosing and using software solutions since 1977!)

This needs to be addressed urgently. It is blatently unfair that if I buy a download of software for my ipad from the Apple App Store and it proves to be full of bugs and unusable, that I have no redress. I believe Apple operate with unfair contract terms in so far as it appears you give them money and they have no obligation to give you a product that actually works. They have a strict policy of NO REFUNDS under any circumstances however hard you try to get one. No wonder they are the richest company in the world…..

Hi

I’m having problems with Digital games downloads. Or ones that the game does not work but the supplier says that once the key has been activated they can no longer refund you, leaving you with a game that does not work. Even if your pc can handle the game. Trust me when i say, mines can. It is unfair that they can wash their hands of it and your left going from the game creator to the supplier and then bk to the creator saying the same thing. Can the law be extended to this bit of the digital download law.