Money : Consumer rights

General tips

If you’ve got a beef with a shop over a product that you feel is substandard…

Move quickly Not registering your complaint promptly can affect your rights. Let the shop know as soon as possible what the problem is. Keep a log of correspondence Make sure you take the name and position of the people you speak to at every stage of your complaint, even if you’re speaking to them in person.

Follow up in writing Ensure your complaint goes to someone in authority; find out the name of the branch manager and address your letter to them.

Automatic seven-day online warranty

Over half of us have now shopped online – in the short history of internet retail, the most popular purchases so far have been travel, books, tickets and music. But the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has found that plenty of sites are not as user-friendly as their fetching interfaces and homepages make out. Fourteen per cent of UK sites don’t comply with the regulation that they must have a physical address, while 40 per cent don’t tell you in advance about the additional charges that suddenly appear when you reach the checkout: always check for this information.

The OFT points out that if you shop online you have a seven-day cooling-off period in which you can return and get a full refund (including the original cost of delivery to you) on any goods you decide you don’t want, regardless of the website’s own stated policy.

To increase your security online, you can download software such as AccountLogon (www.accountlogon.com), which provides you with a single username and password for all your online accounts and encrypts any information relating to your web use. This gives you greater protection than you have when simply entering your credit or debit card details directly on a site’s purchase form.