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Consumer's Telegramm European Edition
If you wish to be informed monthly about European consumer news, just subscribe our free newsletter.Consumer's Telegram February 2008
Insert of n. 14 - Editorial office: Centro Europeo Consumatori (European Consumer Centre, Bolzano - Italy)UNREST IN KENYA
What to do with your booked holiday
Recently some worried consumers have contacted the European Consumer Centre (ECC) because they would have liked to cancel their tours to this country affected by political unrest.The Italian Foreign Office (Farnesina) recommends postponing all planned trips to Kenya as long as "the situation in the country has reached stability again". (See the respective information on www.viaggiaresicuri.mae.aci.it).
We recommend the consumers to consider the following solutions:
- to postpone the departure;
- to accept an alternative booking, a tour package of the same or a higher value without paying more or a package for less money, asking however the reimbursement of the price difference;
- to ask the reimbursement of the whole sum that they have paid in advance without any kind of charges.
There is a new verdict by the Italian Court of Cassation confirming the right of the consumers of asking the full reimbursement of the paid price if he demands to cancel the trip because its original aim, such as entertainment and relaxing, can no longer be reached because of new circumstances.
However, pay attention to certain time limits! Asking the free cancelling of the tour could be denied if the planned departure is not now but only in a few weeks or months.
SUCCESSFUL FOR MORE THAN 5 YEARS
SOLVIT Settles International Cases off Court
If consumers get problems with the public administration of another Member State, because EU laws concerning the internal market are not applied in the right way, they can freely contact the SOLVIT office of their home country. The office will then contact the SOLVIT institution of the other state. The latter tries to find a solution for the problem within a period of 10 weeks. The areas of jurisdiction of SOLVIT are: the acceptance of the academic degree or the job qualification, the access to job trainings and further education, residence permits, voting right, frontier controls, market access of products and services, access to public jobs, awarding of public orders as well as the free capital and payment market.There are SOLVIT offices in every EU Member State as well as in Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. The address of the Italian SOLVIT office is:
Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri - Dipartimento Politiche Comunitarie
Piazza Nicosia 20 - 00186 Roma
Tel.: +39 06 677 95 195 - +39 06 677 95 204 - +39 06 677 95 240 Fax.: +39 06 677 95 044
e-mail: solvit@palazzochigi.it.
Case of the Month
This time the case of the month is about a Finnish consumer who spent her holiday in Italy. Waiting for her flight from Rome back to Helsinki, she went shopping into a Duty- Free-Shop and bought a bottle of wine. Only when she was back home in Finland she noticed that she had paid for two bottles of wine instead of one, as the receipt showed. Therefore, she contacted the ECC of Finland that recommended her to send a letter of complaint to the airport of Rome.Thus, the consumer sent a letter asking the reimbursement of the price she had paid for the second bottle of wine. Some weeks later she got a positive answer: she was promised to get back the money at her next stay in Rome. As she was not entirely happy with this offer, she asked again for help at the Finnish ECC, which, happy about the positive answer of Rome, consequently contacted the ECC Bolzano. Some weeks after our interference, the airport of Rome reimbursed the demanded amount to the Finnish lady, even though there was no concrete prove for her claim.
Remember: It is always worth a try!
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ECC
via Brennero 3
I - 39100 Bolzano
tel.: ++39 0471 980939
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