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Comment by Tistron | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know whether and how this translates to other places in the world?

For me, it's the most interesting with EU/Sweden. We don't have courts like this do we?

I've got a friend who claims to have sued dozens of companies in the equivalent in the UK; he called it "Small Claims Court", but perhaps it has a more specific technical name. Here's an example:

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/legal-syste...

Apparently they are no longer called 'small claims' officially, but everyone I know still calls them that.

The N1 form is to be sent by post[1] and there is also an online version which can be used in some cases[2].

[1]: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65eb13af62ff4...

[2]: https://www1.moneyclaims.service.gov.uk/eligibility

I don't think the courts really matter, what does matter are the legal guarantees. In the EU it is an explicit two years, so I think a situation like this, where a 9 year old appliances is being repaired under threat of legal action, simply won't arise as the customer has no legal basis for his claim.

Depends on the country, in the UK, in addition to the EU mandated 2 years, we have the same "reasonableness" law, although there's a 6 year limit.

I mean, there are normal consumer protection rules. But it's actually commonplace for a lot of appliances at least in Germany and Japan to have a 10 year operational guarantee. I don't really how you can enforce it in either place, but it does seem to me that at least the big traditional companies to stick to these periods for bigger appliances such as air conditioning, fridges, washing machines etc. Interestingly for smaller more modern devices, like say, a table top dishwasher, you're lucky if these things last a year and you'll have a hard time enforcing the 2 year warranty even with the help of the consumer protection agency.

>But it's actually commonplace for a lot of appliances at least in Germany and Japan to have a 10 year operational guarantee.

But these are a voluntary guarantee from the manufacturer, which naturally are much harder to enforce legally. As you are not arguing the law, but the manufacturers wording of his guarantee.

2 years is the EU-wide minimum, individual countries can raise that bar. The Netherlands for example has the same reasonable expectation rule as discussed in the article. You absolutely will win a similar court case here (I know people who've done it).

A not often discussed problem with the EU guarantee is that in the first 6 months, every defect is presumed to have been present at the time it was bought. After 6 months it is on the consumer to prove it, and for most things it is just not worth it to pay for an expert opinion.

So in practice the iron clad guarantee is only 6 months for most consumer products.

At least that's the interpretation of the law in the UK.

edit: small claims courts are quite accessible in the UK, so often the threat of small claims can get thing moving.

The term at which burden of proof shifts from the retailer to the consumer has been raised to 1 year in the EU (maybe not in the UK due to Brexit). As this is a matter of civil law, the standard of proof is also "more likely than not" proof, not "beyond reasonable doubt". You don't necessarily need an expert opinion, it _can_ be sufficient to collect a bunch of reports of similar failures.

> The term at which burden of proof shifts from the retailer to the consumer has been raised to 1 year in the EU

This is great to know. Unfortunately yes, UK won't pick it up automatically.

And yes, in practice you need enough proof to convince a small claim judge, which might not be a lot, especially if the defect is well documented.

> A not often discussed problem with the EU guarantee is that in the first 6 months, every defect is presumed to have been present at the time it was bought. After 6 months it is on the consumer to prove it, and for most things it is just not worth it to pay for an expert opinion.

I don’t think the EU says anything that specific (https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/dealing-with-customers...)

> At least that's the interpretation of the law in the UK.

If that’s true, I think it would be specific to the UK.

Also, what the UK says isn’t relevant for discussing EU consumer rights anymore.

That's just the summary. If you follow the link to "EU Directive on the sale of consumer goods and associated guarantees" [1], Article 5.3 states:

"3. Unless proved otherwise, any lack of conformity which becomes apparent within six months of delivery of the goods shall be presumed to have existed at the time of delivery unless this presumption is incompatible with the nature of the goods or the nature of the lack of conformity."

A sibling comment states that this might have increased to one year though.

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:31...

Here you go :-)

https://e-justice.europa.eu/42/EN/small_claims?SWEDEN&member...

This link also contains a reference for all other EU member states

Cool, thank you!

I don't know about Sweden particularly but in Norway "Forbrukerkjøpsloven" [0] gives you up to a 5 year warranty on any items which are obviously meant to last for at least that long. For instance, shoes have a two years warranty, but a laptop or most kitchen appliances have an automatic 5 year warranty which cannot be waived.

I'm not that knowledgeable about all the details here, but I've done it once for a PSU which stopped working after four years.

[0] https://www.forbrukerradet.no/cause-for-complaint/

5 years feels pretty long for a laptop warranty to be honest. (I'm typing this on a 2019 Intel MBPro, but it's getting pretty long in the tooth, and if it had died already or last year, I would not have felt like I got an unreasonably short lifespan out of it.)

Do I expect a laptop to last 5 year? Yes, most of them. Do I think it's inherently problematic or that consumers were "cheated" if say 25% of laptops only last 4 years instead of 5? I do not.

I don't think it's actually what you meant to ask (I think you are actually interested in legally mandated warranties rather than the courts where they're enforced) but I think most countries have something equivalent to "small claims court" to make low-stakes suits viable.

I have successfully used exactly the same technique of "get a court date, wait for your opponent to contact you and resolve the issue, cancel the court date" in the past to challenge an illegal rent increase in Switzerland. The court for that here is called the Schlichtungsbehörde.

Yeah, I guess I was/am curious about both.

It seems like we have 2 year legally enforced warranty (which I knew about), and some sort of small claims court (which I did not know about).

I think I would have heard about legally mandated warranties that extended beyond the 2 years I knew about. The Australian system seems quite reasonable, I wonder why we don't have something like that? 2 years for everything seems pretty weird.

What's the small claims court named in Swedish?

In the EU there are 2 years warranty for pretty much anything (not services), so the reverse bathtub descent is bit more than that.

As for courts - there is a customer protection commission/service in most (all) EU member states. However, they won't do anything if the item is out of legal claim for 'free' (any) repairs.

My personal issue is not the warranty/courts, though. While I can repair all kinds of stuff (from laptops board repair to gas lawn mowers), the fact you get a piece of junk that serves no purpose until repaired, is damning. A story may make a decent material for a blog post, but in real life you generally don't have luxury to pursue a slow process for repair/replacement, if it's an important piece of equipment.

It's kinda same here in Thailand; with much more bureaucrat issue though.

Although we didn't explicitly have a consumer court, we have a court department in both municipal and Provincial Courts. (ศาลจังหวัด/ศาลแขวง... แผนกคดีผู้บริโภค)

People can file a complaint themselves both in-person or via e-Filing system. Although very tedious to do so, at least in my opinion, it still workable.

Same as the blog's author, any plaintiff I've help with, need some patient and times on both evidence collecting and consulting with the court's appointed lawyer to draft the complaint. But, for the case against big company at least, it mostly worked out for them.

The ESCP can be an option.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_small_claims_proced...

Check Swedish law; there are no EU-wide laws like the Australian one, but some member states di have extra laws similar to the Australian one. I don't know about Sweden specifically.

I know EU law requires a two year warranty on everything, it was one of the few good things the UK got out of it.

The law in the UK is a bit more complex than that. It has to be of what used to be called merchantable quality (they changed the term I think) which means that if something breaks because of something like a manufacturing flaw or design defect you are covered for the reasonable life of the product (so could be a very long time for something like an oven).

This is old law (common law, although now redefined in legislation). EU law added some protections on top of this, and non-EU UK law added more. I am not up to date with the details, but there are plenty of readable guides out there to anyone who needs them.

Sweden does have Small claims courts, you can also contact Konsumentombudsmannen (The Consumer Ombudsman)

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