What are the General Terms and Conditions of Warranty?
General Terms and Conditions of Warranty are rules that you apply within your company and which you apply to every delivery of services, products or services. Within the law, two requirements have been developed with which a provision must comply in order to be considered as General Terms and Conditions of Warranty. First of all, the General Terms and Conditions of Warranty may not contain the most important information about the product or the service. Think of the price, the colour or the quantity, these are also referred to as core terms and conditions. In addition, the general terms and conditions for repeated use must have been developed. The latter is also referred to as 'standard terms and conditions'.
What is stated in the General Terms and Conditions of Warranty?
As stated above, you may not include core agreements in your guarantee conditions. What you may include in the General Terms and Conditions of Warranty is, for example, for how long a warranty is granted on a certain product or service, how this warranty will lapse and what the customer can do to make the information valid.
How do you put the General Terms and Conditions of Warranty into effect?
As an entrepreneur, you must ensure that you inform the consumer in time of your use of the General Terms and Conditions of Warranty. You must then ensure that the consumer can actually consult the General Terms and Conditions of Warranty. This can be done in various ways:
- You give the General Terms and Conditions of Warranty to the consumer before or during the purchase/service. For example, by attaching them to the agreement or including them in the offer.
- If it is not actually possible to make the General Warranty Terms and Conditions available, you can submit the General Terms and Conditions to the Chamber of Commerce or the Court for inspection. You must then let the consumer know where he or she can consult the terms and conditions.
- If you sell via the Internet, you must make the General Terms and Conditions of Warranty available online and make it possible for the consumer to save these. If this is not possible, you must send the General Terms and Conditions of Warranty to the consumer by post or e-mail.
Thus, you must make the General Terms and Conditions of Warranty available to the consumer. Whether the consumer ultimately reads them is his or her own responsibility.
Unreasonable General Terms and Conditions of Warranty
If you have not provided your General Terms and Conditions of Warranty correctly or if the General Terms and Conditions of Warranty can be deemed unreasonable, the General Terms and Conditions of Warranty may be invalidated. This is also referred to as 'nullifying the general terms and conditions'. You can then no longer derive any rights from them. The law contains examples of unreasonable General Terms and Conditions of Warranty. When designing general terms and conditions, a lawyer will always take this into account.
For which customers do you use General Terms and Conditions of Warranty?
It is wise to draw up separate warranty conditions for consumers and business customers. Consumers are subject to different rules than business customers, this is due to consumer protection. It may happen that small entrepreneurs and self-employed persons enjoy the same protection as consumers against unreasonable General Terms and Conditions of Warranty. This is also called 'reflex effect'.
In short, using General Terms and Conditions of Guarantee can save you a lot of valuable time if done properly. When drawing up the General Terms and Conditions of Warranty, make sure to use reasonable terms and conditions and then offer the General Terms and Conditions of Warranty to your customers correctly.
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