He's probably thinking of some similar situations in the US where certain types of clauses are automatically void. No court appearance needed, no waiting, no nothing. It's as if the clause never existed in the contract, no matter what people sign.
For an example of this, see non-compete clauses, for most types of employees in California.
EU doesn't exactly make law. They make more of suggestions. Some of the countries do the drastic opposite of the EU "laws", even if on paper they're saying they don't.
For example, many types of racial discrimination are technically illegal in many EU countries. But look at what actually gets enforced, it's unfortunately made to look like a huge joke.
> many types of racial discrimination are technically illegal in many EU countries. But look at what actually gets enforced, it's unfortunately made to look like a huge joke.
The problem with that specific topic is that it can be very difficult to prove discrimination; also, legislation can pave the way but it's up to people to actually walk it. It's the same in some US states, really, and elsewhere is usually much worse.
Generally speaking, EU Directives (which must be implemented in local state law) are respected, and they can be vigorously enforced when people appeal to them. Like all laws and tribunals, EU ones are not perfect (some countries just ignore contrary verdicts, preferring to pay continuous fines; and some bad local laws are not appealed against nor closely scrutinised), but they are better than the alternative anarchy. Most EU directives did an inordinate amount of good for "retrograde" countries (Italy, Spain, Ireland, Britain etc), but sometimes it takes a generation to appreciate changes in law.
> "EU doesn't exactly make law. They make more of suggestions."
(a) The EU can make "Regulations" which come into force as laws in each member state. But those are rare.
(b) ... The more common form is "Directive", and member states are legally obligated to implement into national laws. This is effectivly "EU law".
(c) ... membership of the EU, also requires membership of the Council of Europe, and European Convention of Human Rights, and European Court of Human Rights, who can make judgements against a member state to force them to do things.
Each country has it's own laws but I think they'd get their money back in most places including the UK. Usually if there's a credit card involved it does not get to court - the credit card company refunds.
Justicable I belive is the term you can put whtever you like in a contract say only two weeks holiday in the UK.
Even if you sign it that part of the contract will be considdred null and void - and you can efectivly ignore it as teh UK's stutory rights take precedence.
Their credit card company is going to refund that amount the second they review the claim. It will be a no-contest thing. Credit card companies fight for their customers and its generally the fastest way to reverse fraudulent charges like this one.
It probably isn't, but it's in that annoyingly small fee zone where it costs more to take them to court than it does to just accept the fine. I think in this case, they'll probably get the money back from their CC company though.
The hotel made a strategic error so no need for court.
Under the UK Consumer Credit Act, when a credit card charge of £100 (or more) is made, the credit card company becomes 'jointly and severally liable'. A charge for a bad review also falls foul of UK Fair Trading legislation which means the couple can pursue the credit card company for the unfair trade breach and reclaim their money that way. Credit card companies don't argue in these cases and refund pretty damn fast (from experience) and just charge-back the business (so they lose the £100 and have additional charge-back fees of around 25% added on top).
If the hotel charged £99.99 instead, it would be a very different story and would need the Trading Standards people at the local municipal council to take action. (They already stated they will be regardless of the refund since these are unfair trade practices.) A refund would happen but would take longer and may well need a local county court action.
But just reclaiming the money via credit card companies is probably easier.
I'm curious about why the people leaving one and two star reviews are not also sending reports to trading standards / environmental health. If the public areas are dirty I dread to think what the kitchens are like.
I knew about small claims court, but didn't realise it was as simple as an online filing. That's really handy to know! I had a similar issue with some £50 concert tickets that I'd bought earlier this year; cancelled the night before the gig and the promoter was being difficult about refunds. I probably still wouldn't have filed, but at least the threat would've prompted them to cough up quicker.
These kind of petty fines really annoy me, far more than a lot of major crimes, because people know exactly what they're doing when they pick a low amount - and they expect to get away with it. You see them all over the place, eg. change your ISP and they'll fine you £50 for not returning a £10 junk router that you have to return, instead of them picking it up.
The money is in an annoying zone where you are put off filing a claim because of the potential cost, not just in money but in time as well. You might still need to go to court over your small claim, which will take up a day and a lot of hassle, etc.
It's one of the reasons that parking tickets are only £30. You could contest them, but it's costing more in terms of your time than you'll recover monetarily, even if you prove the ticket invalid. Likewise with automated speeding tickets from cameras - you could contest it, but it's just too difficult for most people to be worth the risk. Whereas in countries like Switzerland or Finland, where they can have huge fines, I imagine they have a lot more court cases...
I'm not a lawyer and I'm going to appear to play the devil's advocate here, but bear with me and let's say it's not illegal for an agreement to contain such a clause. If it breaks no laws, then why is it illegal? Assuming you have signed an agreement for this knowingly (or at least they presented this agreement to you and it's fair to presume that you've read it before signing it). So what you would have to do is refuse to sign that. Maybe you'll have to find another hotel but you can leave a negative review pointing out this outrageous demand from this hotel. They can't charge anybody a hundred pounds and they get really bad reviews for it.
So basically I don't know what got into their heads when they thought this is a good idea, either. At the same time, though, I wouldn't be surprised if this is not an illegal clause per se. If they charge a hundred pounds for structural damage to their hotel, or theft of towels or so, it would make more sense, and if they consider a bad review to be damaging, it isn't even that far fetched. I think they should know better than to do something stupid like this at the end of the day, however.
Dunno about the UK, but in Germany "surprising" clauses in everyday contracts such as this with consumers are generally illegal. End of story. If this got as far as a court, case would be over in seconds. Read opening statements, have laugh, verdict, good day.
Also don't know which way the EU swings on this, my guess would be towards the German position.
Yup. The alternative is - expect all the clients to read small print on everyday contracts and interpret it correctly. That would be dumb and would slow economy considerably. Imagine hotel making the contract 200 pages long.
Staying for a night at hotel shouldn't require you to hire a lawyer.
What if you declare it up front, in big print. Really. I wonder how many people would still stay. Just put it right above the dotted line on the front page.
By signing this receipt and accepting the key to your room you agree you not place a negative review of this facility on any public accessible site.
The fact that most people would only look at the bottom line (i.e. price) doesn't mean that this wouldn't be a gross infringement of freedom of speech, and unfair trading to boot. Trading involves the possibility of goods not being up to par, and hence the customer complaining to a third party. As long as complaints are not libellous, there is no reason why they could be forcefully restricted.
Still not a chance. Big ink, flashing letters, PA announcements. Same as invisible ink. Courts have a very low opinion of people getting "tricky".
In Germany at least, for example, ALL Click-Through licenses are invalid (last I checked).
A US company I worked for had various (illegal in Germany) data tracking stuff activated. When I pointed this out, they just pointed to the license agreement. Morons. (It was a hardware/software combination, and you only got to the software a long time after you had bought the hardware).
IAL, and I could imagine this fee getting upheld in at least a few US jurisdictions (with the right judge), leaving consumers to rely solely on the Streisand effect to get satisfaction.
The classic notion of a contract as an expression of the compromises forged in a battle between two sophisticated, represented parties has been replaced by overlawyering, boilerplate, and clickwrap.
What's the solution? Hold consumers responsible for every detail of wordy documents they didn't have the time to read, much less negotiate? Make companies bear the costs of every complaint - real, imagined, or fraudlent - a consumer can dream up? Companies can be cheap and sneaky, and consumers can be petty, stubborn, and stupid.
> Assuming you have signed an agreement for this knowingly (or at least they presented this agreement to you and it's fair to presume that you've read it before signing it)
In the EU, not all contracts that you read and sign are legal, e.g. if it's a contact you can't influence, and it significantly alters the balance of rights to your deteriment.
"Unreasonable" terms may be illegal at common law. And the unfair contract terms act limits the ability to insert unusual contract terms without drawing people's attention to them, especially in contracts where they haven't recieved independent legal advice.
This happened in UK. In Europe 100 miles is a long way. There is another country 80 miles away from where this happened, and a different country 111 miles away.
In many parts of Europe (among the countries I've worked) the written word of contracts is worshiped as the ultimate authority. What's "the right thing to do" means nothing by comparison. You sign, you're bound by it, unless you put up a massive legal fight. Not only that, but signed contracts are expected to be used vastly more than in the US.
It's a bit of a culture shock when you see the sharp difference in this respect from how the US treats contracts, at least it was for me.
On both sides you have people saying that the business world will collapse if you treat contracts the way that the other side is treating them. I'll refrain from saying which side I think is right, but I guarantee you that these differences are strong and real.
I'm not sure what countries you've been in, but British culture is definitely not like that.
B2B transactions do have more emphasis on following the rules of the contract, as two businesses are seen as being on a more "even playing field".
B2C transactions, however, rely heavily on consumer protection legislations (Sale of Goods Act, Supply of Goods and Services Act, Unfair Contract Terms Act), which recognise that most consumers do not read contract terms at all. In addition, there are a number of regulators and public bodies whose sole purpose is to provide free legal advice, and to fight cases on behalf of the consumer. Hell, there's a ton of morning television dedicated to hunting down dodgy builders and shaming them publicly.
My point is that contracts aren't as integral to everyday life as you assume, and most people will freely sign them in the knowledge that any bad terms are mostly unenforceable.
Indeed. Also, under British law, a contract is not enforcible if the person who accepted a signature knows that the contract's preconditions weren't met - for example, if you sign a safety waiver which says "I declare I have not been drinking" and you clearly have, the waiver is void and the fairground are up for damages if you hurt yourself on their ride.
Thanks. I flagged yours too. I want the mods to pay attention and find a way to reduce the hostility of Hacker News.
Several people I know in real life have told me that they perceive Hacker News comments as very hostile, so I know it's not just me. Nothing significant has been done to try to correct it.
We care about this a lot, pay close attention, and have been working hard on it.
> Nothing significant has been done to try to correct it.
That's a misperception, presumably because perceptions lag even after changes occur. But one needn't look far to see some: two inappropriate comments upthread have been killed by user flags and clearly marked as such.
Sidepoint: ALL contracts I've ever signed, both in Europe and in US, and across oceans, have a clause that says "If anything in this contract was missed or is in violation of the law, the law prevails. The contract is ruled by laws of X country"
And really, both here and there, contracts are treated more like guidelines than actual rules. What you agree on with a handshake matters far more. Especially with contracts under 5 figures because enforcing them would be way too much hassle and in case anything goes wrong it's easier to just write them off as cost-of-doing-business and move on.
have a clause that says "If anything in this contract was missed or is in violation of the law, the law prevails. The contract is ruled by laws of X country"
Yeah, I've also seen this in many contracts. It's silly. The law prevails whether you write it in the damn contract or not. That's why it's The Law. (You can also try the opposite test: "If anything in this contract is in violation of the law, this contract prevails over the law" --> yeah, right)
It's not really silly at all. It is there for two reasons.
(1) The law requries it to be stated in contracts [at least partially because of (2) below].
(2) Case law develops and can mean that something in a contract was previously enforceable but due to a test case or other development, it is no longer enforceable. Rather than companies having to watch every test case go through the courts and have lawyers rewrite contracts every few weeks just in case something needs updated, the catch-all allows for a more reasonable update cycle with rewrites only happening when there is a significant change to legislation or a number of cases has resulting in significant numbers of terms being invalidated. Pending the rewrite, the term makes it clear any updates to legal interpretation are honored.
In the EU there is also a choice of venue available to consumers so often the 'rules of country X' are not so readily enforceable for companies when they deal with consumers across EU borders. But that's a whole other complicated area.
Actually, the clause usually says that if any particular clause in the contract is deemed invalid under law, then the rest of the clauses are not also automatically invalidated. Like you say, stating that the law takes priority over the contract is a redundant statement.
Actually what most of those clauses are about is stating that only the contractual clauses that are inconsistent with the law are to be ignored, as opposed the entire contract being considered void.
It is true for business contracts that the written word is considered the ultimate authority. The principle is called 'caveat emptor' which can be translated to 'buyer beware'; essentially a business that enters into a contract is expected to read that contract and consult legal advice.
That said, there is protection for consumer contracts. In the UK you have the Unfair Contract Terms Act that protects consumers against businesses attempting to discharge liability to negligence. Europe wide you have the Unfair Terms In Consumer Contract Regulations which prevents businesses from inserting onerous terms into contracts with consumers that are not 'individually negotiated' (eg. almost every contract that a consumer signs without using a lawyer).
