If there are no answers to these questions, it is better not to rush with money. Marcel's lawyer - how to check the service

It is not always possible to understand before payment that a service is potentially problematic, but there are several signs that together should make a person stop and check the offer more carefully. This was told in an interview with “MK in Veliky Novgorod” Candidate of Law, Associate Professor of the Faculty of Finance University, lawyer Kyrlan Marchel, answering the question: how to understand that you are being cheated when buying a service, even before you gave the money?

According to the interlocutor of the publication, especially alarming promises of the result, which objectively depends not only on the performer.

“If a lawyer promises to win a case in advance, an intermediary guarantees approval of a loan, an educational company is a mandatory employment, and a financial adviser is a guaranteed return, this is a reason to be critical of the offer. In such areas, you can promise the quality of work, compliance with deadlines and the implementation of specific actions, but not the result, which depends on the court, the bank, the employer, the market or other third party.

Equally important is the way a person is pushed to pay, the lawyer continued.

“If there is little time to make a decision, if one is persuaded that the offer is valid for only a few hours, and the contract is offered to be read after the money has been deposited, the risk increases. A bona fide seller is usually not afraid to give the customer time to study the terms and ask questions, he said.

Special attention should be paid to the price, said the lawyer. If one amount is called at the entrance and then it turns out that a significant part of the mandatory actions is paid separately, the person does not actually understand the real cost of the service. Therefore, before payment, it should be clear what exactly is included in the price, what expenses are possible additionally and under what conditions the cost may change, the source said.

A serious signal is a contract that allows the contractor to change almost everything unilaterally, the lawyer continued.

“For example, if the company can change the price, volume of service, terms or other significant conditions, and the client is deprived of comparable rights, such a document should be read especially carefully,” he advised.

The provisions by which the performer tries to exclude any liability in advance should also be alerted, Kyrlan Marchel noted.

“Formulations that money is not returned under any circumstances, claims are not accepted, and the company is not responsible for the quality or result of the service rendered cannot be taken as unconditionally valid simply because they are included in the contract. The terms of the contract cannot cancel the rights that the law grants to the consumer, he stressed.

According to the lawyer, it is important who else the person pays. If the advertising is placed on behalf of a well-known company, the contract is concluded with another organization, and the payment is asked to transfer to a personal bank card of a third party, you must first find out the entire chain of relations.

“The buyer must know exactly who the performer is and to whom the claims are subsequently made. Before payment, it makes sense to check the legal entity itself or the individual entrepreneur, the details, the duration of the business, the availability of the necessary licenses and permits, if necessary, as well as the content of the contract and the procedure for refunding money. The more complex the service and the higher the price, the more dangerous it is to be limited only to advertising and verbal promises of the manager.

From a legal point of view, the expert said, the basic principle is enshrined in Article 10 of the Law of the Russian Federation “On Protection of Consumer Rights”. The Contractor is obliged to provide timely and reliable information about the service, its price, conditions and other characteristics that allow a person to make an informed choice.

“Therefore, before payment, it is worth assessing not a single beautiful phrase in advertising, but the entire model of the seller’s behavior. If the result is guaranteed, the price cannot be determined in advance, the contract is not allowed to study calmly, the conditions can be changed unilaterally, and with the responsibility of the contractor everything is as blurred as possible, the risk is already becoming systemic, the source said.

A bona fide service usually withstands a simple test, he continued: who provides the service, what exactly he is obliged to do, how much it will cost, at what time and what will happen if the obligations are not fulfilled. If there are no clear answers to these questions before payment, it is better not to rush with money, the lawyer summed up.