The purpose of this chapter is to establish reasonable regulations and restrictions for the practices of peddlers, solicitors and transient merchants involved with the sale of goods, merchandise or services, and to apply reasonable safeguards for the public against misrepresentation, fraudulent practices, and defective merchandise.
For use in this chapter the following terms are defined:
1. “Peddler” means any person carrying or transporting goods or merchandise who sells or offers for sale for imme-diate delivery such goods or merchandise from house to house or upon the public street.
2. “Solicitor” means any person who solicits or attempts to solicit from house to house or upon public streets, orders for commercial goods, wares, subscriptions, publications, periodicals, merchandise or services to be delivered or fulfilled at a future date. For the purposes of this chapter, “solicitor” does not include a person who contacts another person at his or her residence without prior invitation to enlist support for or against, or solicit funds for patriotic, philanthropic, charitable, political or religious purposes, whether or not there is an incidental purpose involving the sale of some goods or services.
3. “Transient merchant” includes every merchant, whether an individual person, a firm, corporation, partnership, or association, and whether owner, agent, bailee, consignee, or employee, who brings or causes to be brought within the City any goods, wares, or merchandise of any kind, nature or description, with the intention of temporarily or intermittently selling or offering to sell at retail such goods, wares, or merchandise. A merchant engaging in business shall be presumed to be temporarily or intermittently in business unless it is the intention of such merchant to remain continuously in business within the City as a merchant for a period of more than sixty (60) days.
The provisions of this chapter do not apply to persons engaged in the following described activities:
1. Persons selling at wholesale to merchants for the purpose of resale.
2. Persons selling or distributing newspapers or similar tabloids.
3. Persons selling tangible personal property or services to business enterprises.
4. Persons who sell at their permanent residence in the City works of art or crafts made or created by such person or a member of such person’s immediate family.
5. Persons licensed by the State of Iowa to sell real estate or insurance or licensed as transient vendors of drugs.
6. Person selling or delivering tangible personal property or services through a permanent business located in the City, or sold to regular customers on established routes (e.g. Schwans, Avon).
7. Farmers who offer for sale products of their own raising or persons selling at wholesale to merchants.
8. Persons selling their own work or production either by themselves or their employees.
9. Candidates (or their duly authorized representatives) for local, County, State, or national office soliciting donations and/or support.
10. Persons selling tangible property at a garage, basement, or yard sale held at one of the person’s residences, a shelter house, or similar type location.
11. Persons conducting and selling admissions to or for theatricals, shows, rides, sports and games, concerts, cir-cuses, carnivals or any other public amusement.
12. Solicitations and sales by charitable and nonprofit organizations defined and authorized by Chapter 504 of the Code of Iowa or are authorized by and organized under statutes or regulations of the United States Government, or approved by the Internal Revenue Service, all public and private schools and colleges, nonprofit clubs and lodges that are not ordinarily conducted as a business that do not meet the requirements of Chapter 504.
13. Persons licensed as auctioneers by the laws of the State.
Loading...