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Satisfactory quality is harder to define. The law says "satisfactory" is what a reasonable  person would be happy with, looking at all of the information easily available to you, such as its price and condition. See more later on second-hand goods .

But what's reasonable ? Now there's a question lawyers have rowed about for years and there's no set answer.

In a legal context and in a dispute with a shop, it means goods must be in a state that you, or any other normal, reasonable person would think was reasonable. Easy, eh?

Certainly if you bought an expensive music player and the sound was virtually inaudible, most people would almost certainly say it wasn't satisfactory. But let's say you bought a cheap garden trampoline, where you could bounce on it, but it moved around as it wouldn't bed into the soil. Would that be satisfactory?

Ultimately if you and the shop couldn't resolve it, you'd need to take it to court for a judge to decide. But hopefully, it wouldn't get that far.

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...