In message , at 09:06:01 on Fri, 25
May 2012, Jethro_uk remarked:
What would be more interesting would be a court ruling, on how far (if at
all) T&Cs can mandate payment method. I appreciate in a very specialist
transaction, a vendor might be able to stipulate "credit cards only".
However, in a situation where a service is nominally offered to the
general public, would a clause insisting you pay by card, or magic beans
be regarded as "unfair". And if not, what *exactly* is the concept of
"legal tender" ?

If you owe someone some money and they are threatening to sue, you can
pay the disputed amount into court (apart from anything else, that
defuses much of the debate about the creditor's legal costs). Legal
tender is what the court will accept. It's perhaps helpful to think of
it as "tender accepted by the legal system", rather than "tender that is
legally obliged to be accepted in a wider context".

Separately, traders can also make it a contract condition (ie it's not
automatic) that you must pay according to the same[1] rules (eg that
they won't accept more than £5 of 10p pieces etc).

But they could just as easily have a different (either stricter or
laxer) rule.

An obvious example of a stricter rule is those machines that won't
accept smaller denominations of coins (and probably aren't set up to
accept 25p's and £5 coins either).

On the other hand, some machines will accept huge numbers of coins (I've
never found a limit at Tesco's self-checkouts for example).

[1] On the basis that if the rule is good enough for the courts, it's
good enough for them as well.
--
Roland Perry