What do the
‍new rules bring for retail, e-commerce and consumers in Slovakia?

A large consumer law amendment entails a comprehensive regulation of Slovak consumer law. Since the middle of this year, this will affect not only e-shops, but also brick-and-mortar stores, which have to adapt to the new obligations. What are these specific changes?

Black Friday and other discount campaigns

If the retailer wishes to indicate that the product is discounted, in addition to the discounted price, the retailer will now also be obliged to indicate the previous lowest price of the product during the last 30 days. In practice, this means that for discounted products, retailers will have to indicate 2 prices, e.g. the price of the product: 100 EUR, and the lowest price in the last 30 days: EUR 120. However, we know from the experience in neighbouring countries, where this regulation is already in force, that the interpretation of legislation by supervisory authorities differs and for the practical setting of indicating discounts, guidelines from the SOI (Slovak Trade Inspection) and case law are needed.

Publishing customer reviews

An emphasis on greater credibility is now also being placed on the product reviews that the retailer makes available to consumers. The amendment introduces new obligations for retailers to inform consumers whether and how they check and ensure that the rating actually comes from consumers who have bought or used the products. It is a deceptive commercial practice to encourage persons to provide false consumer reviews or recommendations and to misrepresent them in promotions on social media.

Distance selling

For distance contracts, there is a fundamental change. If the consumer withdraws from the contract without giving a reason, the cost of returning the product is borne by the consumer. However, this applies only if the retailer has informed the consumer of this obligation in advance.  

Interestingly, there is also a special regulation of the distance contract between the retailer and the consumer, where the consumer provides the retailer with his/her personal data instead of the purchase price.

Online marketplaces

Operators of online marketplaces, i.e. platforms that bring together a large number of retailers and allow the direct conclusion of a contract between the retailer and the consumer, now have specific pre-contractual information obligations towards consumers. For example, this will be information regarding (i) the main parameters that determine the ranking of the product offer in the search results and their relevance, or (ii) an indication that consumer protection rules will not apply to the buyer's relationship with the seller if the seller is not a retailer.

Contracts with digital performance

In addition to the amended regulation of the consumer purchase contract, the Civil Code also introduces a new type of contract that is a contract with digital performance, the content of which may be digital content or a digital service.

Within this type of contract, the amendment also introduces specific conditions for the provision of digital performance, inter alia, in the form of conditions for delivery of the digital performance, changes to the performance, quality and quantity requirements or specific rights and obligations upon withdrawal from the contract.

Other novelties of the consumer package

The new consumer package also brings about partial regulation, such as: a prohibition of the secondary sale of tickets for events that have been obtained by the retailer by automated means in order to circumvent the limit on the number of tickets per individual; the unit price does not need to be indicated for products sold through beverage or snack machines; or the sanction of removal or deletion of content published in the on-line interface or deletion of the domain.