Traders are legally obliged to disclose pre-contractual information to potential customers. There are 8 key information items you have to clearly present to consumers before they conclude any sale or service contract with you in your shop. However, if the information is already apparent from the context, the trader needs not to worry about these 8 items.

There are different consequences if you do not provide the pre-contractual information requirements. First of all, you run the risk of disappointing your customers and risk reputational damage. Secondly, the law itself provides some important immediate consequences if certain pre-contractual information requirements were not respected. Most importantly you run the risk of having to pay a pecuniary fine under national law for your breach to the Consumer Rights Directive.

There are different consequences if you do not provide the pre-contractual information requirements. First of all, you run the risk of disappointing your customers and risk reputational damage. Secondly, the law itself provides some important immediate consequences if certain pre-contractual information requirements were not respected. Most importantly you run the risk of having to pay a pecuniary fine under national law for your breach to the Consumer Rights Directive.

The customer needs to have accurate precontractual information. The total price of the goods or services you offer should be clear. This means that the price needs to be fully complete, i.e. it must include all of the applicable taxes, additional freight, delivery and postal charges. If the price cannot be calculated in advance, what you need to disclose to the consumer is the manner in which the price is to be calculated.

This situation concerns the conclusion of a so-called “distance contract” for which all precontractual information requirement has been fully harmonised in the EU. You will always have to respect the 8 key information requirements but will have to provide additional ones.

A good way to comply with the rules is to use a set of icons to illustrate the relevant information categories. A model has been provided by the European Commission here: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/consumer-marketing/files/model_digital_products_info_complete_en.pdf

Each Member State may choose to define the language in which the information has to be disclosed to the consumer. In most cases, it is the official language(s) of the Member State.

If you provide the information in another language than the required one, it is considered that the information was not provided at all. In order to check what language each Member State has chosen, please have a look at: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/consumer-marketing/files/overview_regulatory_choices.pdf

Therefore, if the trader's website is directed at the consumers in a Member State that has imposed language requirements under Article 6(7) of the Directive, the trader should provide the consumer with contractual information in the language required by that Member State.

For the moment under the current laws, there is no obligation to sell for online products and services. This is, however, going to change with the introduction of the Geoblocking Regulation which will impose an obligation to sell but not an obligation to deliver the goods or services. Under EU law, if you direct your business activities to consumers in EU countries different from your own one, it is usually the law of the country in which the consumer lives that applies to your contract with the foreign consumer. If you have both chosen a different law, that choice cannot deprive your foreign customer of the consumer protection granted by the mandatory provisions of his country of residence.

If, as a trader, you want to avoid being considered as a trader directing his activities to another country, so that you don’t have to apply consumer protection laws that are not the ones from your country, you need to act carefully. For instance, in order not to give the impression that you are targeting the market of a neighbouring country, you can opt not to translate your website in the language of that country.

The answer to this question would depend on the delivery agreement. The 14 days should start counting from the day the customer got physical possession of the goods. That could be derived for example from the confirmation of receipt of the consumer to the delivery service.

The customer has the obligation to return the product within 14 days from the day he communicated his decision to exercise his right to withdraw. Therefore, the trader should check the date when the customer informed him of his willingness to return the product and start counting the 14 days from then on. If the customer sends the parcel back later than that, the trader can refuse it.

The customer has the right to inspect the product. Nevertheless, if the use of the product is more than necessary, as in this case, the seller can estimate the diminished value of the product and ask that money back from the customer.

Same as above, the customer has the right to test and use the products in the same manner as he would be allowed to do in a shop. Hence, he can try the shoes. However, if he used the shoes more than necessary, which may be indicated by the fact that the shoes smell, then the trader has a right to be compensated for the diminished value. This will particularly be the case where the shoes can no longer be sold as new.

In a case where the customer has been informed from the start that he is the one to bear the direct cost of returning the product, the seller has no obligation to bear that cost.

In practice, the mandatory consumer legislation of another State will only be relevant if his or her rules are more protective than those of your legal system or the law you have agreed to refer to with the consumer. This might be the case where, for example, the legal guarantee period of the consumer’s law is longer than the one under your own law.

If it was indeed stated in the contract binding both the consumer and the trader that the shoes should have been white, then it is clear that the goods delivered are not in conformity with the contract. There is a high chance in this case that the customer will complain quickly and will use his right of withdrawal which he has if the good was purchased online. In this case there is a lack of conformity with the contract; the shoes do not comply with the description given by the seller. In this case the consumer will have the right to ask for the replacement of the white shoes, which are not in conformity with what was in the contract. The consumer might be still happy with the shoes and ask for a discount.

There is no doubt that the consumer did not order broken glasses and therefore the delivered goods are not in conformity with the contract. The consumer has, therefore, a right to ask for redress and ask for the replacement of the goods.

As you are no longer active and probably the legal entity of your shop does not exist either anymore, you can advise your customer to contact directly the manufacturer of the good or send him to another shop selling similar goods and brands. In any case, the two-year legal guarantee period starts from the day the consumer took possession of the product.

Since the consumer only comes more than six months after the problem occurred, it will be up to him to prove that there was an issue from the beginning. If he succeeds in doing so and in convincing you, then the two years legal guarantee is applicable and the consumer will be entitled to either a replacement or a repair. You could, for instance, offer to replace only the frame and not the whole bike.

The base for this claim that products are the “best” is for the least not very convincing. There is nothing in the rest of the advertisement to clearly substantiate this claim. This could be considered to be a subjective claim and we might assume that an average consumer will not be misled by it.

Nevertheless, caution is advised with this type of advertisement as it could be judged misleading as “best in town” could be interpreted as if an independent agency gave this rating to the seller, even if that’s not the case. In that case, it could be considered that people have been deceived. It is therefore advisable to be very careful with this type of claims.
 

There is little evidence to support the claim. By definition the claim entails that the pizzas are cheesier than all the pizza’s produced by competitors. This could be considered as misleading and could harm the interest of competitors in an unjustified way. More acceptable alternatives would be to posit that the pizza is “extremely” or “very” cheesy.

No, you cannot. This would be considered an unfair commercial practice as it is one of the explicitly blacklisted practices. It would be considered that you are falsely stating that a product will only be available on particular terms for a very limited time. It is considered that you are provoking an immediate decision and depriving consumers of sufficient opportunity or time to make an informed choice.

You can take back the product and send it to the manufacturer, with whom you have a deal. In this case, the memory of a tablet was clearly an important element in the purchase decision of the consumer and he was misled if the tablet was sold with less memory than promised to him.

It should be however clear whether it is really the case that the consumer did not know about the memory capacity and that he does not try to get a new tablet for free. You could, for instance, argue that the memory capacity is very clearly stated on the box of the tablet.
 

The answer to this question depends on a number of factors. What absolutely needs to be avoided is what is called “bait advertising”. This would be considered an unfair commercial practice and is one of the explicitly backlisted practices in the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive.

You should know that you cannot not offer these products at all or only an inadequate number thereof. If your stock is disproportionally low with regards to the advertisement campaign there is a high chance that the practice would be considered as unfair.
 

The easiest way is to go to the ODR platform ec.europa.eu/odr, choose your language and choose ‘Dispute resolution bodies’ section on the left side of the screen. It then gives the list of ADR bodies in all countries, with the possibility to choose a country.

Usually, the ADRs are specialised to cover certain sectors, products or services. It is best to choose the one (or the ones) that covers your sector. If there are several options, you could also choose depending on other characteristics – how much do you have to pay for the ADR to look at your case, are they close to where you are established and other conditions that may be important to you.

First of all, you have to check what the ADR decision says about it. They would have to inform you what your next steps can be. In some cases, you will be obliged to follow the ADR decision unless you challenge it in court. In other cases, the decision of the ADR could be just a recommendation, and you can choose whether to follow it, or not.

One of the main requirements for the ADR bodies is to be neutral and independent. If you believe that an ADR does not comply with this requirement, you could send this information to a body that supervises the ADR.

If you are an online trader, you can encourage the consumer to use the EU ODR platform

http://www.ec.europ.eu/odr  

The Platform provides automatic translations for all the documents, so can be very helpful in this respect.