Consumer Rights Act 2015

Consumer Rights Act 2015

2015 CHAPTER 15

Commentary on Sections

Part 1: Consumer Contracts for Goods, Digital Content and Services

Chapter 3 Digital Content

What remedies are there if statutory rights under a digital content contract are not met?

Section 45: Right to a refund

216. In relation to this section, if the trader’s right to supply the digital content (section 41) is breached, the consumer has a right to a full refund. Section 45 does not apply in any other cases (such as a breach of the quality rights). There is no corresponding duty for the consumer to return or delete the digital content for the following reasons. Firstly, the concept of return does not easily sit with digital content (data produced and supplied in digital form) and therefore to provide for a return of the digital content would not be practical; and many consumers would find it difficult to properly delete the digital content(26). In relation to intellectual property rights, there are other rules that protect these property rights and the Act’s provisions in no way undermine those rules. Indeed, if anything, the provisions taken as a whole would support the intellectual property rights of others, since they will act as a disincentive to traders to supply digital content where they do not have the right to do so.

217. Subsection (2) of section 45 provides that, where the digital content that the trader did not have the right to supply was only part of the contract (e.g. a single film supplied as part of a subscription package), the refund would not be of the full amount paid, but an appropriate amount paid relating only to the portion of digital content affected.

218. Once the trader agrees a refund is due, the payment must be made without undue delay and at the latest within 14 calendar days. The refund must be in the same form as the original payment unless the consumer agrees otherwise. So for example if the consumer paid by credit card the refund should be to their credit card, unless the consumer agrees that a cheque is acceptable (see paragraph 215 for the situations where digital content has been paid for with in-game or digital currency). The trader cannot charge the consumer a fee for the payment of the refund.

26

Where digital content is provided on a disk or other tangible media, different rules apply