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The European Commission has proposed a Minimum Standards EU Directive to protect consumers from pressure selling and misleading marketing practices.
Currently, consumers are constantly faced with a variety of pressure selling tactics and the EU draft Directive is aimed at outlawing all of these practices, such as sellers:
The draft EU Directive lays down general principles:
Currently there are numerous misleading marketing practices, for example those that describe certain services as 'free' when in fact they are not. Under the draft Directive, misleading marketing will make it illegal for traders to claim to be signatories to a code of conduct when the traders are not or describe products as "gratis", "free", "without charge" etc., if the consumers have to pay for such services or goods (except delivery or collection costs).
With regard to misleading advertising, the Advertising Standards Authority's self-regulatory codes lay down the standards that advertisements have to meet - any advertisement has to be 'legal, decent, honest or truthful'.
Comment: There is a long way to go in educating consumers on their legal rights, especially in light of the substantial increase in distance selling of goods and services to consumers, including online trading.
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© RT COOPERS, 2005. This Briefing Note does not provide a comprehensive or complete statement of the law relating to the issues discussed nor does it constitute legal advice. It is intended only to highlight general issues. Specialist legal advice should always be sought in relation to particular circumstances.