A distinction is typically made between product/producer guarantees and dealer guarantees:
Product / producer guarantee
A product or producer guarantee, which is the most used form of guarantee, is attached to the product and will often cover also other countries than the one where the product was bought, for example within Europe or throughout the world. It is typically the producer who grants the guarantee. Therefore, if you wish to exercise the guarantee you need not contact the seller, but may contact the producer directly. Examples of product guarantees could be a thirty-year guarantee against a floor being worn down or fading when exposed to sunlight, or a three-year guarantee that the battery of a portable computer can be recharged.
Dealer guarantee
A dealer guarantee is granted by the dealer/seller, and if you wish to exercise the guarantee you must contact the dealer directly. Thus, when shopping abroad you do not get typically the advantage that product guarantees offer, namely that you can deliver the goods for repair in Denmark. However, a dealer guarantee may give you other valuable rights that do not follow directly from your right of complaint. A typical industry, in which dealer guarantees are offered, is the industry of selling used cars where dealers warrant special conditions relating to the car.
Your detailed rights under the guarantee must appear from the guarantee conditions. See more about this in the other sections.
Examples of a guarantee could be a five-year functional guarantee on a stereo set or a five-year anti rust guarantee on a car. Depending on the guarantee conditions, you may file a complaint to the guarantor throughout the guarantee period if the stereo set has gone to pieces or the car is beginning to rust.
The difference between a guarantee and a right of complaint
A guarantee does not replace the right of complaint but runs parallel with it. In case a defect is not covered by the guarantee, it may well be covered by the right of complaint, and you can therefore contact the seller.
Six Months’ Presumption Rule
Sometimes reference is confusingly made to a six months’ guarantee under the Danish Sale of Goods Act or similar European rules. However, this six months’ ‘guarantee’ only concerns the question of who is to prove that a defect existed already at the time of delivery. According to the Danish Sale of Goods Act (and the underlying Community legislation) a defect in the first six months after delivery is assumed to have been present at the time of delivery unless the seller can prove that this was not the case. The first six months of the two-year complaints period will therefore remind you of a guarantee in terms of proof, and it is therefore sometimes referred to as a guarantee.
Pay attention to the fact that we only discuss purchases you do as a consumer. This means when a private person makes a purchase from a trader. Purchases between two traders or between two private persons are not dealt with.