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Hiring a photo booth: consumer rightsA guide by Dotto

Australian Consumer Law · with Consumer Affairs Victoria’s guidance where it adds a line

Hiring a photo booth: what the consumer law guarantees

When a business is paid to bring a photo booth to a wedding, a birthday or a work party, the Australian Consumer Law has a say in what was paid for. This guide reads that law from the side of the person who pays.

A photo booth drawn from the front, its pleated curtain half drawn across the opening, a stool and a small camera window inside. 123
The curtain, half drawn. Each guide below settles one question before anyone sits down behind it.

Hiring a photo booth: consumer rights is a guide to what the Australian Consumer Law says about a hired photo booth, written and published by Dotto. When a business, in trade or commerce, supplies a consumer with services, the law guarantees that they are rendered with due care and skill, that they are reasonably fit for any purpose the consumer made known, and that they arrive within a reasonable time where the contract fixes none. The ACCC adds that most of the consumer guarantees still apply when a consumer hires a product instead of buying it outright.

General informationDotto is not an event supplier. It does not offer, hire out, supply, deliver, staff or arrange photo booths. This is general information, not advice.

Individual complaints about a business are managed by the consumer protection agency in each state and territory, which may also offer a voluntary dispute service, business.gov.au says.

A hire is a contract

In the ACCC’s words, a person who buys products or services enters into a contract with the seller, and a contract generally forms as soon as a buyer accepts a seller’s offer. A contract is an agreement between two or more parties that the law will enforce: if one side breaks it, the other can take legal action.

Certain consumer rights sit in the law itself, out of the agreement’s reach: the ACCC says its terms and conditions can’t take them away. That is the thread running through all three guides.

Three guarantees, a line each

Care and skill
The ACCC’s measure is the work a competent provider of average skill and experience would turn out, done with an acceptable level of care.
Fit for the purpose
What the service produces, and the service itself, has to suit any purpose the consumer stated.
On time
Where no time frame was agreed, the service has to arrive within a reasonable time.

Three guides, three rings on the rail

Each guide is one question a person can settle before anyone sits down on the stool: what the hire has to deliver, what happens if it falls short, and what the small print about cancelling may and may not do.

  1. What a hired photo booth service must deliverThe three guarantees for services in the Act’s own words, who counts as a consumer, and where the rules for hired products come in.
  2. When a hired photo booth fails or does not arriveMinor and major problems with a service, what a consumer may choose after a major one, and what a “no refunds” term cannot do.
  3. Cancellation terms in a standard form hire agreementWhen a pre-written hire agreement is a standard form contract, the three-part test for an unfair term, and what the test leaves alone.

What sits outside this guide

The event around the booth is not covered here: permits, liquor, food stalls, marquees and crowd safety each have their own rules. Nor are the rules on photographing guests or children, or the question of who owns the pictures. The guarantees for goods bought outright come in only where a hire touches them.

Everything on these pages is national law unless a page says otherwise. Where Consumer Affairs Victoria puts a point in its own words, the page names it.