The Contradiction Engine · For lawyers · Free

Cancel and refund?

The situation

You advise Zephyr Games, which runs an online game. Imre, who was 17 when he signed up, has paid £12 a month for a membership for eight months. He now asks to cancel and to have all eight payments refunded.

Zephyr’s terms say ‘no refunds’. The company did not ask Imre’s age when he signed up. Imre says the membership is simply entertainment; Zephyr’s sales manager says that ‘for teenagers, games are how they see their friends’.

The rules

Rule A (Minors Act 2015, s.2). A person under 18 may cancel a contract before turning 18, or within a reasonable time afterwards, and may recover money paid under it, unless the contract was for necessaries.
Rule B (s.3). ‘Necessaries’ means goods or services suited to the minor’s condition in life and to the minor’s actual requirements at the time of the contract.
Rule C (s.4). In deciding whether something is a necessary, the court looks at the minor’s circumstances, including what the minor already had of the same kind.

Your task

Advise Zephyr whether to refuse or to give the refund.

Everything you need is on this page: no outside law and no tools. All places, statutes and people are fictional (the Republic of Eastmark). More than one answer may be defensible: what matters is that your reasoning follows the rules shown.

Step 1 · What kind of conflict is this?

A real conflict that the law does not resolve: reasonable lawyers could differ.No real conflict: the two rules govern different things.The conflict disappears once the rules are read together properly.A real conflict that the law tells the decision-maker to resolve by weighing.

Professional skills training with fictional material. It is not legal advice and is not accredited by any court, regulator or professional body.