C&P at supermarkets

You certainly may not go around *deliberately* breaking things, no. That would be a criminal offence. But the store cannot automatically charge you for accidental breakages, no matter what signs they may have that says that they will.

They can *ask* you to pay, but if you refuse, they will have to sue you for the damage in a civil court. The amount they get depends on what degree of culpability the judge assesses was the customer's and how much was the store's.

A customer who ran about wildly in a specialist china shop would probably be ordered to pay for the lot, but a supermarket where families shop that had a huge display of expensive crystal glasses precariously piled up on top of each other in the middle of an aisle would probably be deemed to be 100% liable for the damage caused by a child knocking it over.

It's more than that. The shop displays prominent signs at the tills to the effect that brownie badges are welcome here. So the shop also has a contract with the badge issuer, and if they fail to honour the terms which the issuer has promised me will apply in any shop which says they subscribe to the badge scheme, then I'm entitled to be cross with them.

If the shop advertises that it accepts brownie badges, and if it is implicit in this particular badge that it doesn't need a PIN, and the shop nevertheless insists on one being used, they are out of order.

I haven't seen them.

Well, this under the counter dealing does happen, of course, and is almost without exception a tax fiddle, but it would never happen at a Tesco's till.

Possibly. Typically in that case I'd get a discount for agreeing to it.

Certainly, but if it isn't, it hasn't.

I dare say. It could get even murkier in the case of these new-fangled self-operated tills, and I don't mean those handsets you carry around with you (they seem not to have caught on quite as the shops must have thought they would)), but where you act as your own checkout chick, scan each item, and then shove your card in the machine at the end. They save on staff costs because they have one operator watching four such tills at a time. I've not actually dared to try one yet, especially not with my non-PIN card.

It might, but it sounds pretty implausible. Generally shops are keen as mustard to shift their stock, to the extent that what is "in their mind" is to secure the sale (establish the contract) as early as possible and to worry about how and when they're going to get paid later.

Yes but at least there it is always made explicit. An exception which proves that the general rule is that acceptance is unconditional?

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

Did they promise you that there would

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

Of course you can be cross. That doesn't necessarily mean you can walk off without paying, though!

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

Of course - but where did that scenario come from?

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

So, you accept the terms without reading them, then complain afterwards? :-(

No-one can guarantee that, but I do think they implicitly promise to shield me as much as possible from the effects of any glitches should they occur. I subscribe to the brownie badge service and that gives me the right to assume that it will be reliable, since if it isn't, I'd always have to carry an alternative ace up my sleeve [to wit: cash], in which case I might as well just use that ace all the time and ditch the badge.

If I may assume the badge is so reliable that I don't need aces, and if the badge stops working, and I have no aces, then I'd have had a wasted trip if I couldn't take my shopping home without being allowed to pay for it later. That's not "without paying", it's just without paying there and then.

I forget what the OP's exact problem was, but I don't think it matters. AIUI it involved an irregularity resulting in his being unable to use the card. [And if it didn't, then please treat my rantings as applying to the hypothetical position which would obtain if it did].

Absolutely not. The written terms I have not seen do not apply. This is a common law contract governed entirely and excusively by implicit and reasonable terms such as the proverbial man on the Clapham omnibus would expect to apply to an ordinary everyday transaction in a shop.

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

Nope, his problem was merely that he wasn't happy with the cashier chick swiping his card rather than him placing it in the PIN pad slot :-

"Oscar the Cat" wrote > When I once inserted the card into the machine myself, > the cashier got all flustered and grabbed my card, and they > swiped it in her own EPOS then asked me to enter the PIN.

That's not an irregularity, and certainly didn't result in him being unable to use the card - all he had to do to use the card was enter his PIN as requested. But :-

"Oscar the Cat" wrote > I should have refused, asked for my card back and then > walked out the shop with a trolly full of already scanned goods.

Which is why I queried it all that long time ago!

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

You could have said that at the start! Rantings so treated!!

I suppose that's the nearest you will ever get to conceding that I was right all along.

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

I do concede that I was talking about the scenario as developed within the thread, and that you were thinking of something else! [But how does that make you: "right all along"?]