CABINET PLANIt is still much easier to subscribe than to cancel, door sellers still use bad practices and children are tricked into spending money in online games. The government now wants to put an end to that. What will change?
Minister of Economic Affairs Micky Adriaansens (VVD) will send the consumer agenda 2023 to the House of Representatives on Wednesday. Better protection against aggressive and misleading sales at the door and online forms the backbone.
1. Will I finally be rid of door sellers?
Not quite, but there will be an extra threshold in the form of a mandatory pause for reflection. The sale will only go through if you confirm the deal by e-mail or letter some time after the door visit. For example, the cabinet wants to prevent you from immediately falling for a chat trick from a door seller and being stuck with something.
Once you have agreed in writing after the chat at the door, the legal cooling-off period of fourteen days will still start. “We have to better protect people who are less verbally strong,” says Adriaansens. ,, Door sales are often already irritating, you are confronted with an unsolicited offer. That is not ideal for reaching a fair deal. We now limit that. And we are going to speed up, we can arrange this ourselves as the Netherlands.”
2. Why isn’t door-to-door sales completely banned?
The energy sector in particular is making a lot of noise, this site wrote earlier. Sellers often paint a too rosy picture, nag and insist until they get it. Vulnerable people, often the elderly, are the victims. Door-to-door marketing is increasing again after a lull in the corona years and now that permanent contracts are possible again after the fall in electricity and gas rates.
The sector itself promised improvement, a municipal ban was possible locally, but according to the cabinet this is insufficient. The House of Representatives would like to go even further, this week called on parliament to ban the sale of energy contracts at the door. A sympathetic idea, the cabinet thinks, although it is at odds with the principles of the free market, says Adriaansens: “Marketplaces are everywhere, online and on a square, sometimes at the door. Above all, I want a level playing field, with this step I think we will also arrange that well for energy sales.”
3. And what about the paid perks in games: what will change in that area?
In many games – like Candy Crush – you can get ahead by spending money. That encourages addiction and costs users, according to politicians. So Adriaansens wants to try via Brussels to tighten up European rules on such ‘in-app purchases’, for example with more information and age limits. Furthermore, special treasure chests – loot boxes – declared completely taboo, following a motion on the subject from CDA Member of Parliament Henri Bontenbal.
Well-known example of a popular game with loot box is Fifa Ultimate Team, the football game where you can build a team with top players, which you buy through those treasure chests. But you don’t know in advance which players are in your treasure chest. That lottery aspect is wrong: ,,That one loot boxes we want to ban it completely, you don’t even know what you’re paying for. We also want to better regulate other purchases in those online games. We prefer to do these themes in an EU context, but we have noticed that there is quite a lot of support for that as well.”
4. And will it also be easier for me to cancel a subscription online?
That is the intention. You recognize it: taking a (trial) subscription to a streaming service, magazine or fitness club is super easy online, but how do you get rid of it? That is often more complicated. The cabinet wants to make new rules, so that cancellation can also be done with one click on an easy-to-find button on the website. France and Germany already have such a statutory obligation to provide information, and similar rules should also apply in the Netherlands.
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