The right of complaint is a statutory right giving you as a consumer a number of rights towards the seller if there is something wrong with a product you have bought. Typically, it is the right to have the product repaired, to get another product, or to get the money back. Your right of complaint cannot be taken away from you even if an agreement has been made to this effect.
Purchases of goods in the EU (and Norway and Iceland) are subject to a common set of rules which describe the minimum rights you have as a consumer. However, the existing Community rules are minimum rules, and the individual countries can therefore choose to place consumers in a better position than that required by the Community rules. In Denmark you always have a right to complain about defects within a period of two years from the time you received the goods.
According to the EU-rules, you always have a right to complain about defects for two years, when it concerns goods bought in the EU. But in addition to that there might be important differences when it comes to what you are entitled to, and how you should act.
The difference between a right of complaint and a guarantee
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.
Only purchases you do as a consumer
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.