What are your consumer rights?

Your consumer rights protect you when you buy goods and services. This means you have rights by law, which a shop or service provider can't change.

This should be taught at school - everyone should know their basic statutory rights. Know these and you can enforce fair treatment. It's so crucial, you should actually memorise it. Our mnemonic is to call them your SAD FART rights. When you buy goods they must be...

This applies even if you buy things in a sale or with a discount voucher. Frankly, every customer-facing member of staff should be taught these rules before they're allowed to work. Yet as they're not, we need to be polite and persistent in quoting the rights.

This means stuff must work and not fall to bits after an hour's use. This might sound pretty basic common sense, but without it, you can find yourself exposed.

Say you buy some new car headlights without checking which car they're for – if you get the wrong ones, that doesn't make them faul...