What If A Market Trader Rips you Off?

Buying goods at a market can be a hit or miss proposition at best. The price is often right, well below what you’d pay in a normal retail shop, but what about the quality? The brands are often ones you’ll have never heard of before, and there’s always the risk of getting the item home and discovering that it either doesn’t work or doesn’t do what it should.

Some people will shrug, chalk it up to experience and say you get what you pay for. But is that the right attitude? No, it’s not. When it comes to buying from a market trader, you have consumer rights.

What Are Your Consumer Rights With Market Traders?

The setting might be a little different, but you’re covered for things you buy from a market trader just as you would be in a shop. The Sale of Goods Act 1979 applies to everything they sell, which means it has to be as described, safe, and fit for the purpose for which it was intended. If it doesn’t match up to any of those criteria, then you’re perfectly within your consumer rights to return it.

Similarly, with faulty goods, you should return them to the market trader (and for all they might seem flighty, they do turn up at the market, usually in the same pitch, week after week). It’s his responsibility to replace the item, repair it, or refund your money, although he might try and tell you otherwise.

You have a reasonable amount of time in which to return goods to the market. That’s a very elastic phrase, and deliberately so. There’s no fixed limit, although after six months you’d need to prove the faulty goods weren’t the result of your actions in some way if the trader wanted to argue about your consumer rights.

Counterfeits At The Market

It might not happen as widely as it once did, but markets and market traders are known for knock-offs, items that are very similar to designer brands – it’s still very common to see people selling perfume that’s supposedly designer very cheap at a market.

But what if you buy something that’s supposed to be a designer brand, such as a Louis Vuitton bag or a pair of Ugg boots, then get them home and discover they’re not what it was claimed they were?

Again, the Sale of Goods Act applies, as they’re not as described. You can return them and demand a replacement (which would mean the brand-name item if it was claimed they were the real thing) or a refund. However, most market traders are canny, so they won’t say they’re selling the real thing.

If it does seem like misrepresentation (and let’s face it, you’re not going to get a proper Vuitton bag for £20, nor should you think you would) or the design seems very close to the original, you could also complain to Trading Standards.

They take a very harsh view of counterfeiting, and if they investigate and determine the trader has been selling counterfeit, it could result in a fine of up to £5000 and confiscation of the counterfeit stock.

Whatever the situation, your consumer rights go along with you to the market.