Terence Flanagan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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316. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if the Sale of Goods and Supply of Services Act, 1980, or any other consumer rights legislation allows for retailers to not accept returns for faulty goods during a particular period and insists they return at a later time; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1216/14]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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The rights and remedies that apply where goods are faulty are regulated by the Sale of Goods Act 1893 and Part 2 of the Sale of Goods and Supply of Services Act 1980, the collective citation for which is the Sale of Goods Act 1893 and 1980. There are also parallel rights and remedies under the European Communities (Certain Aspects of the Sale of Goods and Associated Guarantees) Regulations 2003 (S.I. No. 11/2003).

Nothing in either the Act or the Regulations authorises a trader to refuse to accept the return of faulty goods during a particular period or to insist that they be returned at a later time. For both legal and practical reasons, it is advisable for consumers to return goods at the earliest possible time after the detection of a fault.

Section 43 of the Consumer Protection Act 2007 provides, among other things, that it is a misleading commercial practice for a trader to provide false information in relation to the legal rights of a consumer, or matters respecting when, how or in what circumstances those rights may be exercised, where that information would be likely to cause the average consumer to make a transactional decision that the average consumer would not otherwise make. A trader who engages in a misleading commercial practice under section 43 of the Act commits an offence. The imposition by a trader of onerous or disproportionate non-contractual barriers where a consumer wishes to exercise a contractual right might also be an offence under sections 53 and 54 of the Act.

If the Deputy is aware of a case or cases where traders are refusing to accept faulty goods during a particular period, I would invite him to submit the details to the National Consumer Agency for investigation.