The CEO of one of the country’s largest supermarket chains recently highlighted the significant amount of vouchering and promotional activity that has been taking place in grocery. He warned this was “unsustainable medium-term activity” and that “you can only give away £10 notes for £9 for so long”. But how easy would it be for retailers to stop their vouchering activities? And what legal risks would they be exposing themselves to?
Vouchers are usually littered with caveats that enable retailers to retain control - making offers subject to availability and enabling them to be withdrawn at any time. In some cases, the terms will extend to an exclusion of liability for financial loss.
Yet carefully worded terms and conditions will not remove the power of the consumer voice - and that voice will be loudly heard through social media.
Depending on the offer and the scale of the withdrawal, the adverse publicity implications could be enormous and result in significant reputational damage.
Just last year, a website glitch resulted in all Screwfix goods being ‘marked down’ to £34.99. While Screwfix addressed the error quickly, the publicity did not play out so well when it was reported that staff had threatened to charge customers full price for their goods if they didn’t return them. Screwfix quickly agreed to honour sales that had already been concluded, but otherwise was able to rely on the protection from its terms and conditions.
Where terms and conditions don’t give the necessary protection, a binding contract is entered into by a retailer, and where advertising is considered to be deliberately misleading the disaffected consumer may seek redress. Those claims may only be small in financial terms but they must be dealt with by the retailer, as the wider publicity implications of ‘being sued’ may have more serious consequences.
As consumer awareness of rights continues to grow, more people will inevitably be tempted to take action. Retailers should tread carefully before withdrawing promotional offers or taking cover behind ‘small print’.
Sarah Conroy is an associate in the commercial dispute resolution team at Weightmans LLP
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