Legal Literature

Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, Chapter 1, Article 2, (i) Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, Chapter 2, Section 1, Article 7, 4. Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, Chapter 2, Section 1, Article 7 Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, Chapter 2, Section 2, Article 8 Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, Chapter 2, Section 2, Article 9

Unsolicited supply of products and/or services is prohibited under the UCP Directive, but traders use certain related sales techniques to circumvent the law. The author describes these techniques and tests these against the law. In doing so he discusses some recent decisions of the Consumer Authority.

According to the author certain practices that resemble unsolicited supply, may constitute misleading and aggressive commercial practices. For that reason he believes that the consumer benefits from reducing the nuisance that unsolicited supply causes. The Consumer Authority may achieve this by imposing (high) penalties upon companies that violate the Act Unfair Commercial Practices. The broad provisions in the Act Unfair Commercial Practices increase the Consumer Authority’s options to also deal with the ‘borderline cases’ which means an extension of consumer protection in the field of unsolicited supply and related practices.

 

The decision makes reference to the following case law examples of the Consumer Authority:

- Sanction decision CA/NB/35/76 in case 35/Naturpost of November 5, 2007.

- Sanction decision CA/NC/2/67 in case 2/Postgarant B.V. of January 23, 2008.

- Sanction decision CA/NCB/17 in case 17/UPC Nederland B.V. of  April 23, 2008.