How to complain when you have bought a commodity or a service in Europe

Hører til forbruker europa og for foreigners

You have been trading in another country in Europe, and something has gone wrong. It appears perhaps that a commodity you have bought is defective? Or that the goods you have ordered through Internet were never delivered?

Publisert: 03.10.2005 10:40

Below we will tell you how to complain regardless of whether you have bought something while you were physically present in the other country or if you have bought something via Internet.

If you want to complain over a commodity or a service that you have bought in another European country, you should start with addressing the seller. Send a letter, a fax, an e-mail or make a phone call to the seller and explain what you are dissatisfied with. Describe the matter as complete as possible. Send copies of receipts, certificates or similar documents. Ask the seller what he will do in order to remedy the defect and ask for a written answer within for instance two weeks. If you have language problems or in other ways have difficulties, you can get assistance from ForbrukerEuropa/ECC Norway

If you do not come to terms with the seller, the matter has become a dispute. Then you may turn to ForbrukerEuropa/ECC-Norway. We will help you to proceed with the matter and to have the dispute tried before a competent complaints board in the country you bought the commodity or the service.

First of all, you fill in a complaints form which the EU-Commission has worked out, and which has a link to this article. It is not mandatory to do so, but we recommend it in order to have the matter illustrated in the best possible way. The Swedish and the Danish version may be filled in in Norwegian. The English version should rather be filled in in English if possible. ForbrukerEuropa/ECC Norway can help you with a translation if necessary. To conclude, you sign the complaints form and send it to ForbrukerEuropa/ECC Norway in form of a letter.

We can help you:

• preparing your complaint
• if necessary translating various documents
• passing on your complaint to the right complaints board

We know how the complaints boards in the various countries work and can give you information about possible costs, the time it takes to handle the case and so on. We keep in contact with the committee en route in the handling process. If necessary, we can also help you with the filling in of the complaints form.

Our contact information is:

Postal address:
ForbrukerEuropa/ECC Norway
c/o Forbrukerrådet
P.O. Box 4594 Nydalen
0404 Oslo

Address: Rolf Wickstrøms vei 15, Oslo
E-mail address: post@forbrukerradet.no

The forms below are in PDF-format. In order to download them you need the program Acrobat Reader, which you can download here for free.