Customers have a responsibility to act with due care when they enter your store and browse your goods. If they breach this responsibility and break a product in-store, they may be liable. However, depending on the circumstances, if your actions caused or contributed to the item being broken, then the customer may not have to pay. This article will explain whether you are responsible if a customer breaks one of your products in-store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When you sell products to consumers in New Zealand, you need to comply with consumer law. This means ensuring that your products meet the consumer guarantees that apply to them under the Consumer Guarantees Act<\/u><\/em><\/a>. If you fail to meet this standard, then you must provide the customer with a remedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, if you sell a customer a faulty product that breaks as soon as they use it, you may have broken the consumer guarantee that the product meets the necessary standard of quality. In that case, you need to either\u00a0repair, replace, or refund\u00a0the broken product, depending on the situation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n However, until a customer purchases a product, these consumer guarantees do not apply to them. Therefore, if they break a product in-store, it becomes a matter of weighing up contextual factors in determining who is most at fault, instead of relying on a set quality standard.\u00a0If a customer failed to take due care when the product broke, they usually have to pay for the product. However, if your business contributed to the breakage somehow, the customer may not have to pay for the broken product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If a customer has broken one of your products in-store and you or your employees contributed to that breakage, you are responsible for that breakage. For example, say that you or your employees stacked the plates in your store haphazardly or spilled something on the floor and did not clean it up. Say that a customer knocks over these plates when examining them or slips on the floor and breaks your other products. Your store contributed to that breakage through your negligence. The customer then has a reasonable basis for refusing to pay for the broken product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n Continue reading this article below the form\n <\/i>\n<\/a>\nWhen Am I Responsible?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n