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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 2007
Insert of n. 42 - Editorial office: Centro Europeo Consumatori (European Consumer Centre, Bolzano - Italy)Computers
Apple iBook with Manufacturing Fault
The European Consumer Centre Denmark informed the network of European Consumer Centres (ECC-Net), to which also our centre in Bolzano belongs, that in 2006 quite a few Danish consumers complained about total crashes of Apple-Notebooks- especially of the iBook G4.In many of the cases the notebook was a little more than one year old so that Apple rejected the complaints with the excuse that the warranty period was over. As soon as the complaints became more and more, the Danish Consumer Council sent some of the faulty notebooks to an independent laboratory for analysis. The result was that the total crashes were caused by faulty soldering points on the main circuit board. Referring to these results the Danish Consumer Council asked Apple to reimburse the price of the notebook. However, the company Apple keeps denying that there are any manufacturing faults.
ECC-Net
Study Visit: Trip to the European Consumer Centre in Dublin
On the 10th and 11th of May 2007 the Italian Consumer Centre paid a visit to the Irish colleagues in Dublin together with Consumer Centres of Greece and Cyprus. The meeting with the Greece and Cyprian colleagues showed that for many consumers in Europe it is not a matter of course to have certain rights and to insist on and fight for them. As the Consumer Centres of Greece and Cyprus are quite young members of the European network of Consumer Centres (ECC-Net), the colleagues asked the old stagers from Ireland and Italy for tips and suggestions about the different ways to inform the consumers about their rights. Moreover, they also reported about their own informative activities and initiatives.Case of the Month
This month's case is about tour packages. A consumer booked a tour package to Egypt for himself and his family. The travel agency was in this case also the so-called tour operator, which means that they organised the tour.
On the day of departure, however, there waited a bad surprise for the family: they were waiting vainly for the minivan that should have brought them to the airport. Calling the travel agency they got the information that the time of departure of the flight had been brought forward, but nobody had informed the family about the change! In such cases the consumer protection code says that the consumer has a right on compensation for all additional damages that are caused by breach of the contract. Here we can speak about compensation because of lost holiday joy, that means that the consumer was not able to enjoy his booked package tour holiday as a time of delight, entertainment or relaxing - a damage which is more serious than the pure financial disadvantage like the loss of money for the paid price or a possible loss of profit.
The consumer complained in a written form and asked the tour operator for the reimbursement of the price of the package tour as well as a compensation of 1,000 Euro for the lost holiday joy. However, the tour operator fulfilled the demands just partly: a compensation of only 300,00 Euro a person was paid. If the consumer had gone to court he would probably have got a little bit more. However, we must consider that the Italian judges have not elaborated common rules yet how to quantify lost holiday joy. Thus, every court must decide case for case at its own discretion.
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