Where a consumer contract provides for a supplier to unilaterally vary fees and the law gives the consumer the right to terminate the contract if that happens, the supplier must state that right in plain and intelligible language. If not, the court may take that into account when determining whether the consumer contract term is unfair. Even if the consumer’s right is mandatory, the supplier should still provide that to the consumer in plain, intelligible language. This is what the European Court of Justice has ruled in a case that had been referred to it by a Hungarian court, but the result – which conforms with what the Office of Fair Trading had always believed to be the case – applies in the UK too.
