Abstract:
Traditionally businesses operating in New Zealand were free to impose one sided contracts. To be sure, while the Fair Trading Act 1986 (NZ) (FTA) and the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 (NZ) (CGA) placed some limits upon businesses’ freedom of contract, such restrictions did not prevent what many considered unfair terms. In March 2015 New Zealand introduced its unfair contracts terms law (UCL), which was modelled on Australian law, to protect consumers against the use of unfair contract terms in standard form consumer contracts. To assess the impact of the regulatory change a study collected and analysed contracts of business operating online in New Zealand both before and after the UCL came into effect. The study’s findings show that while the UCL has had some effect the changes are not sufficient to protect consumers and amendments are required to ensure that more unfair contract terms are removed from standard form consumer contracts.
