sion in a contract for the sale of goods, made on or after that date, which releases the retailer from his legal obligation to supply goods.

which are of merchantable quality which meet the description applied to them and which are fit for the purpose for which they were sold.

What does this mean in practice? Suppose that you bought a television set on 19 May and that it refused to give a picture on 25 May.

With it came a manufacturer's guarantee, which said:

Should the equipment fail to operate satisfactorily it should be reported to the dealer from whom it was purchased who will normally be able to provide service and make any claim under guarantee on your behalf. The dealer or service agent will be entitled to make a charge to the purchaser for any labour, postage, packing, and transportation costs involved in diagnosis, removal and replacement of faulty component parts.

It is now certain that this guarantee has no adverse legal effect whatsoever on your rights against the retailer. You can go to him and insist that he repairs the television set - clearly faulty when you bought it -

without any charge to you, and that he provides you with another set while he is doing so. If he refuses to do so, you are legally entitled to take your set elsewhere to be mended, to hire another one in the meantime, and to recover the cost of doing so from the shop which originally sold you the set.

Guarantees You may still see exclusions of responsibility in guarantees for some time to come. Ignore them. The fact that a guarantee says that you must pay labour charges, for instance, has no legal effect on your rights against the retailer. The place where you bought it - whether it is a mail order firm, a discount store or your local high street shop - is still responsible for compensating you for any faults. And it doesn't matter whether you have paid cash or you are buying on credit. If you are buying on HP, any cost that you incur can be deducted from future instalments.

This doesn't mean that a guarantee is not a good thing to have. A good guarantee can still be very useful. In practice it may well be the quickest way of getting your faulty equipment put right without argument. A guarantee like this, for instance, adds to your normal legal rights, without taking anything away: 'We guarantee that should this Automatic Washing Machine prove to be defective by reason only of faulty workmanship or material within 12 months of the date of