Q&As

Where a company offers an online platform where employees may buy discounted products and this is a specific benefit of their employment are those transactions within the scope of consumer protection regulations?

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Produced in partnership with Lynne Counsell of Addington Chambers

Published on: 23 May 2024

It is assumed in this answer that the employee is purchasing an item, such as a washing machine, for their own domestic purposes through an employee discount scheme.

There are various consumer protection laws designed to protect individual consumers against certain selling practices in respect of goods, services and digital content. Their purpose is to protect the consumer against unfair or misleading practices and give consumers appropriate remedies.

These laws include:

•
the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (CRA 2015) which clarified, consolidated and expanded various consumer protection laws. CRA 2015 applies to contracts for goods, digital content and services and provides, for example, that goods and digital content must be of satisfactory quality and fit for purpose and contracts for services must be carried out with reasonable care and skill
•
the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, (CPUTR 2008), SI 2008/1277 which prohibits unfair

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Lynne Counsell

Barrister, Addington Chambers

Lynne has been in traditional Chancery practice for some thirty years, specialising in probate matters, construction of wills and trusts and also financial services and drafting.

Lynne was for some years counsel for Tower Hamlets, representing them on landlord and tenant cases and counsel for Bedford Building Society representing it on mortgage cases.

Lynne has written or updated over fifty books, including writing the initial volume of Atkin’s Court Forms “Financial Services” and updating Halsbury’s Laws on Injunctions. Lynne was also co-author of two editions of “Insider Trading” and co-editor and one of the writers of “Chancery Practice and Procedure.”

Articles include “Marketing of Investments” for the Law Society Gazette and “The Doctrine of Mutual Wills” for the Trust Quarterly Review. Lynne won one of the few cases on mutual wills in the last fifty years – Charles v Fraser (2010).

Lynne has drafted the standard unit trust for the government of Nigeria, the rules and related documentation for various building societies and clubs, shareholder agreements, company takeovers compliance documentation for certain banks as well as wills and trusts.

Lynne was awarded the 2017 Corporate international Magazine Global Award – “Investment Contracts Barrister of the Year in England”.