International Consumer Protection

International Consumer Protection - Cuatrecasas

www.cuatrecasas.com/media.../spain._international_consumer_protection_920.pdf

Spain. Alejandro Payá Pujadó, Carlos Ara Triadú, and David Casanueva de la Cruz. Cuatrecasas, Gonçalves Pereira. Barcelona, Spain. Introduction. Spanish law grants consumers and users enhanced protection to deal with the unbalance between the parties in the relationships entered into between consumers and ...

Spain Your Consumer Rights

Spain, like other EU member states, is covered by EU Consumer Directives that have been put  in place to give protection to consumers throughout the EU.  For more detail on these and what protection they give you please select  'Rights when buying in the EU'. 

As well as EU Consumer Directives, some member states have additional laws and regulations that give added consumer rights.  Below is a list of additional legislation in Spain.  Please see the various legislation below, however we would suggest that you contact us to confirm if this legislation would be applicable in your circumstances.

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• Royal Legislative Decree 1 / 2007 of 16 November, by adopting the text of the General Law for the Protection of Consumers and Users , and other complementary laws .

What is the Consumer Law In Spain | Spanish Solutions

https://www.spanishsolutions.net/legal-issues...spain/what-is-the-consumer-law-in-spai...

The new EC Consumer Rights directive applied to all member states in Europe with affect from 13th June 2014 . "Today Europe is putting an end to consumer rip-offs online. Every consumer in the European Union can claim his or her rights under the Consumer Rights Directive meaning: no more pre-ticked boxes when you ...

The new EC Con­sumer Rights dir­ect­ive ap­plied to all mem­ber states in Europe with af­fect from 13thJune 2014 .

“Today Europe is put­ting an end to con­sumer rip-offs on­line. Every con­sumer in the European Union can claim his or her rights un­der the Con­sumer Rights Dir­ect­ive mean­ing: no more pre-ticked boxes when you buy a plane ticket, no more ex­tra charges for pay­ing with your credit card on­line and no more traders telling you that you can’t re­turn a good you bought on­line,” said Vice-Pres­id­ent Vivi­ane Red­ing, the EU’s Justice Com­mis­sioner.

There are four key changes for con­sumers and traders: cost trans­par­ency, the re­turns pro­cess, con­sumer pro­tec­tion and com­mon rules for busi­nesses. It ap­plies primar­ily to on­line or off premises sales.

The fol­low­ing points are the most im­port­ant ones within these:-

Hidden charges and costs on the internet will be eliminated. Fraud­sters can­not use tricks to con someone to pay for something they thought was free, like of­fers on the in­ter­net that ad­vert­ise something as free when in real­ity it is not (for ex­ample horo­scopes or re­cipes).Con­sumers ex­pli­citly are ex­plained they have to pay a price and asked to ac­cept it.

Pre-ticked boxes will be banned in the EU. For ex­ample, when boxes are pre-ticked for travel in­sur­ance.

14 calendar days to change your mind on a purchase (pre­vi­ously the law was 7 days), for whatever reason if you change your mind. Where the seller has not prop­erly in­formed the con­sumer of the with­drawal right, this will be ex­ten­ded to a year. This is ex­ten­ded to on­line auc­tions, such as Ebay (but only for pro­fes­sional sellers, not private ones).

The withdrawal period starts from when the consumer receives the goods, not the con­tract date as at the mo­ment. The rules ap­ply to in­ter­net, phone and mail or­der sales, as well as to sales out­side shops, in the street, at a Tup­per­ware party or dur­ing an ex­cur­sion or­gan­ised by the trader.

Better refund rights. The con­sumer must be re­fun­ded within 14 days, in­clud­ing costs of de­liv­ery.

Clearer information on who pays for returning goods. If traders want the con­sumer to pay for the cost of re­turn­ing goods after they change their mind, they have to clearly in­form con­sumers be­fore­hand, oth­er­wise they have to pay for the re­turn them­selves.

Price transparency. Con­sumers must be in­formed of the total cost of a ser­vice and any ex­tras will not have to be paid if not prop­erly in­formed be­fore they place an or­der.

Model EU standard withdrawal form introduced mak­ing it easier to with­draw from a con­tract made over the tele­phone or on­line.

Surcharges eliminated for the use of credit cards and hotlines. Traders will not be able to charge con­sumers more for pay­ing by credit card or other means of pay­ment than what it ac­tu­ally costs the trader. Traders who op­er­ate tele­phone hot­lines will not be able charge more than the ba­sic tele­phone rate for the tele­phone calls.

Paper invoices. Many com­pan­ies have charged more for pa­per bills and only de­livered in­ter­net bills. This was a prob­lem for many Span­ish pen­sion­ers. Now cus­tom­ers can­not be charged for bills prin­ted and the in­ter­net billing will be the opt-in meas­ure.

Cold Callers must identify the com­pany they rep­res­ent from the out­set and the reason for call­ing. Calls can­not be made between 21:00 and 9:00 or at any time at week­ends and pub­lic hol­i­days.

Better consumer protection for digital purchases such as in­form­a­tion re­lat­ing to di­gital con­tent. (de­tails of the hard­ware and soft­ware the product works with).