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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 June 2005
Insert of n. 42 - Editorial office: Centro Europeo Consumatori (European Consumer Centre, Italy)COMPARISON OF PRICES
Which European Citites are worth going shopping?
Our collegues of the ECC Dublin have now published a mini research regarding the comparison of prices in 9 EU memberstates.Madrid is the clear winner regarding bargains, while the prices in Rome are quite considerable. The CD ‘How to dismantie an atomic bomb’ by U2, for example, costs only 15,95 Euro in the Spanish capital, while in Rome you have to spend 22,90 Euro for it. The whole research is available on our website.
NUTRITION
Noni, the Magic Potion
On the Internet Homepages of producers and sellers of Noni you can find quite a lot of healing stories about the juice of Morinda Citrifolia, which is distributed also under the name ‘Tahitian Noni’. On the site noni.de you can read, for example, that the juice is used as a medicine against rheumatoid arthritis, high blood pressure, liver diseases and many more. However, it is a fact that Noni is declared as food in Italy and the law about food labelling and advertisement strictly forbids to attribute therapeutic qualities to groceries. This means that statements like ‘healing and soothing’ are forbidden and can be legally persecuted.Moreover we should worry about alarming news from Austria and Germany: The VKI (Austrian Association for Consumer Information) reported about three cases where grave liver damages were the probable result of taking Noni. Also the TV News Magazine WISO of the German channel ZDF did some research about Noni and arrived to the conclusion that ‘some people may like the Tahitian Noni-juice, but it does definitely not work as remedies against any diseases.’
TERMS OF CONTRACT
Establishment of a data bank
Already in 1993 the EU enacted a guideline about terms of contract, which was transposed in Italian law in 1996.In order to support its memberstates now the European Comission has established a data bank of those contract clauses, which is available on the hompege of the European Commission.
THE CASE OF THE MONTH
A French consumer had a heating system installed by an Italian firm in 1999. In 2004, shortly before the end of the warranty period, it broke down and the consumer tried everything to assert his right of warranty. In spite of the support of different suppliers and other French partners of the firm he did not achieve anything and had therefore no other choice than to buy a new heating boiler. However, he did never give up entirely and in the end, to our big surprise, the firm suddenly turned out very consumer friendly due to a change in management. According to their new consumer oriented marketing strategy the firm was ready to pay back the amount for the new boiler without long discussions.This example shows how consumer protectors and commerce can work together to settle problems instead of creating them.
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