141–150 of 167 posts
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Really? A judge is actually ordering you to cough up? Can you share any more details?
No, we're fighting via our lawyer, but if it does end up in court, we will likely lose as contract law is pretty strong in the UK - and apparently this is a significant part of this recruiter's business model, so they're well practised at it and have test cases in which they've been victorious.
I think this is an example of contracts being broken, often online but elsewhere too. You can't rent a hotel room without a credit card which helps hotels avoid you running off without paying for minibar peanuts or rock star damage to a room. OTOH, the fact that you can't update your iphone, rent a hotel room or do a lot of other things without agreeing to a "contract" or policy so long that it's impractical to read…
I think this is key. The law assumes that contracts are a big deal for both parties, that they are relatively rare, and that they're given attention on both sides.
But it's hard to get through daily life anymore without signing a ton of contracts. Software update for your phone? Contract. Sign in to some random online service? New T&C I have to agree to i.e. contract. Pay for something with a credit card? That's a mini contract you're signing.
Now, in some cases there's no real excuse for not reading a contract. To take a random example, if you sign up for a two-year contract with a cell phone provider and you're given a stack of paperwork and you sign without reading through it first, I'm comfortable saying that's on you. This isn't something you do often and you have ample opportunity to read the thing first.
On the other side of things, Apple keeps tossing these gigantic contracts my way whenever I do much more than breathe. I'll literally get fifty or sixty pages of contract when trying to download a software update or just sign into the store after they made some random change to their T&Cs. Nobody reads these things. I know it, you know it, Apple knows it, and because of that they should be strongly limited in what they can do.
I think an important test for a contract should be asking the hypothetical question, "what if everyone who signed it read through it in detail first?" For something like buying a house, this would obviously change nothing. For a cell phone contract, it would change little. For random gigantic software EULAs and web site T&Cs and similar things, it would drive all the customers away. If having everyone read through it before signing it would break the process the contract was made for in the first place, the contract shouldn't be valid.
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It's an EU law. God bless the EU's consumer rights campaign.
EU doesn't exactly make law. They make more of suggestions. Some of the countries do the drastic opposite of the EU "laws", even if on paper they're saying they don't. For example, many types of racial discrimination are technically illegal in many EU countries. But look at what actually gets enforced, it's unfortunately made to look like a huge joke.
The problem with that specific topic is that it can be very difficult to prove discrimination; also, legislation can pave the way but it's up to people to actually walk it. It's the same in some US states, really, and elsewhere is usually much worse.
Generally speaking, EU Directives (which must be implemented in local state law) are respected, and they can be vigorously enforced when people appeal to them. Like all laws and tribunals, EU ones are not perfect (some countries just ignore contrary verdicts, preferring to pay continuous fines; and some bad local laws are not appealed against nor closely scrutinised), but they are better than the alternative anarchy. Most EU directives did an inordinate amount of good for "retrograde" countries (Italy, Spain, Ireland, Britain etc), but sometimes it takes a generation to appreciate changes in law.
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I'll just put this here, since I can't edit my previous comment: Thanks for all the downvotes for sharing a differing life experience, you who downvoted. You shouldn't downvote just because you disagree. Hacker news is so hostile. By the way, I wasn't talking about Briton, Germany, France or any of Western Europe.
I didn't downvote your earlier comment (because I'm not able to downvote, yet), but I certainly flagged this comment. What, exactly, do you think you're adding to the discussion at hand by vomiting out such tripe?
Several people I know in real life have told me that they perceive Hacker News comments as very hostile, so I know it's not just me. Nothing significant has been done to try to correct it.
This happened with a New York hotel. They were trying to charge $500 for bad reviews http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/04/travel/bad-hotel-review-fi... Thank you internet (Yelp, Tripadvisor) for putting them to shame!
It actually seems to me that they may have copied the idea from that other hotel, the wording is very similar: From the CNN article: "Please know that despite the fact that wedding couples love Hudson and our Inn, your friends and families may not," Guardian article: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/nov/19/tripadvisor-c... “Despite the fact that repeat customers and couples love our hotel, your friends and fam…
The trip advisor page. http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Hotel_Review-g186332-d554701-Re... There were 147 bad reviews before the story broke and these bad reviews are the majority. I'm curious about the dupe detector not spotting duplicates. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8629113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8629117 Edit: this link is to the mobile site; one links to .com and the third links to .co.uk
wow, indeed, very nasty reviews. The Hotel is up for sale: http://www.propertysales.com/Listing/Burlington-Road-West-Bl...
For a 40 bed hotel!!
A chip van turns over more than that.
The trip advisor page. http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Hotel_Review-g186332-d554701-Re... There were 147 bad reviews before the story broke and these bad reviews are the majority. I'm curious about the dupe detector not spotting duplicates. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8629113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8629117 Edit: this link is to the mobile site; one links to .com and the third links to .co.uk
Clearly the experience has belatedly led to their discovery of trip advisor. Blackpool is a classic example of a seaside resort that's been badly hit by cheap package holidays to the sun. As such you can expect it to be full of hotels hanging on by their fingernails. Also it's known to have lots of social welfare bed and breakfast establishments. You'd need to be living under a rock in England not to know that. If yo…
Partly. Other resorts have managed to reinvent themselves, but the perception I have is that our local tourism trade took things for granted, didn't innovate and assumed there'd still be millions of overnight visitors to cash in on.
It's a very parochial place and despite all our problems and examples like this popping up periodically, as a town we still seem to maintain a collective belief that it's a great place to live/visit and "everywhere has its problems", with Blackpool just being hard done to.
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wow, indeed, very nasty reviews. The Hotel is up for sale: http://www.propertysales.com/Listing/Burlington-Road-West-Bl...
In that advert it says the annual turnover is about £160K. For a 40 bed hotel!! A chip van turns over more than that.
Blackpool's season for many overnight accommodation businesses has gone from April-November to just school holidays and major events.
The annual accounts/report must make for tragi-comical reading.
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This law refers to "A contractual term which has not been individually negotiated ... A term shall always be regarded as not individually negotiated where it has been drafted in advance and the consumer has therefore not been able to influence the substance of the term ... if an overall assessment of the contract indicates that it is nevertheless a pre-formulated standard contract. .. Where any seller or supplier cla…
Interesting. Thanks. Some more context: defines the principle of unfair: - If a contractual term has not been individually negotiated *and* - the term causes significant imbalance in the parties rights and obligations, *then* - the term is contrary to the requirement of good faith. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfair_Terms_in_Consumer_Contra... It seems UK law is trying to define the principle of "unfair contract" in…
Where US law can be seen to lean heavily towards the letter of the law, English law leans heavily towards Intent - both the spirit of the law, and the intent of the involved partied.
This is also where a great deal of friction against EU lawmakers is created. The EU leans towards "legislate everything", whereas we trust our judges to properly apply terms such as "unfair", "good faith", etc.
I think this is commonly missed when reading into each others' laws - there exists not only different laws and different legal systems, but also differing legal cultures. And that last one is much harder to read into.
I dont understand how this is even legal in Europe.No matter what the contract says.How can this be a legal clause? I dont get it.
It's not. This is unfair trading; the couple will eventually get their money back, and the hotel will be forced to strike down that clause. The fact that you write a contract (the policy) doesn't mean that contract is actually legal.