Category: Press Releases

(Prague, January 10, 2013) Abidance with the obligations when selling goods in retails and discount actions is monitored by the Czech Trade Inspection Authority during the whole year. By the end of the past year, the CTIA focused on sale of goods for action prices in chain stores. In an extraordinary control action, the inspectors checked 296 workplaces offering “goods in action” and found breaches of obligations in almost 40% of them. “These discounts are not always real and consumers are not always properly informed. This is why the inspectio...

(Controls of casual footwear with a membrane)(Prague, January 3, 2013) Do you need any special footwear, e.g. with a membrane preventing moisture penetration to shoes and removing perspiration? You should know that not all the footwear claimed to have such characteristics meets the expectations, as the CTIA inspectors found within a laboratory assessment of selected casual shoes with a membrane. Only one of five pairs of shoes taken at five specialized sellers complied with the declared characteristics. It was the male footwear MERREL J86901, M...

Cases found by the CTIA inspectors within the pre-Christmas period included unlawful practices at presentation events, telephone trap hidden behind a credit offer, fictive discount on pizza, fraudulent doorstep selling, and a fraudulent e-shop.

(Results of fuel quality controls in November 2012) (Prague, December 18, 2012) November inspections of motor fuels, performed on samples taken at petrol stations throughout the Czech Republic, identified shortcomings in the quality of gasoline, diesel fuel and even LPG. Of the 357 samples, 12 samples did not meet the quality requirements. Their deficiencies were mainly found in the area of parameter divergence due to operational negligence. In two cases - one sample of BA 95-Super gasoline and one of LPG, the fuel parameter irregularities were...

(Final report of the project) (Prague, December 11, 2012) The control action of the Czech Trade Inspection Authority focused on marking of 2 kg pressure PB gas bottles and the quality of LPG was held from April 1 to September 30, 2012. Within the inspections at 23 subjects, no failures concerning the obligatory marking of the checked 2 kg PB gas bottles placed on the market after May 1, 2003, as well as no serious breaches of the quality of the taken gas samples were found. However, fifteen of the checked subjects breached the obligations as ...

(Ústí nad Labem, December 12, 2012) You can save money when shopping in a good e-shop, but you can lose more in the opposite case, i.e. when you choose an unfair vendor who uses the virtual environment and distance selling to sell poor quality goods to trusting consumers. In such case, the consumer’s right to withdraw from the contract in the period of 14 days may not be effectively used as the vendor fails to refund the money within 30 days from the conclusion of the contract. The vendor stops communicating and ignores the founded consumer’s c...

(Prague, December 10, 2012) Traditionally, the pre-Christmas period is the time of the highest takings for shop owners. However, various jacklights and swindlers whose creativity is sometimes enormous also have their time of success. The Czech Trade Inspection Authority alerts shop owners and operators against false controls of female “inspectors” who claim to be inspection officers of a non-existent “Czech Trade Institute”. An entrepreneur from South Moravia became one of their victims when she paid a fine of 10,000 CZK on the spot to these al...

(Prague, December 6, 2012) On November 27, 2012, the order of the Director of the Středočeský and Prague Inspectorate of the CTIA came to force imposing a fine in the maximal amount of 5 million CZK to the Oil Group, s. r. o. company for selling poor quality fuels at the filling station Oil Group in Bubenečská Street in Prague 7 – Holešovice. The filling station was closed during a control on September 3, 2012. In the consequence with the previously imposed fine for poor quality motor petrol BA-95 amounting to 2 million CZK, the Czech Trade Ins...

Partial report of the third quarter of 2012(Prague, December 4, 2012) The number of consumers’ complaints about presentation events grows as well as deceitful and aggressive commercial practices of representatives of some companies at these events and as well as the related debts of seniors being the target group of these “entrepreneurs”. Nothing can discourage regular visitors from participation in such events: alerting cases of indebted, humiliated and cheated seniors and frequent advices. They want to keep participating in these tours and th...

(Prague, Brno and České Budějovice, November 30, 2012) In the frame of the planned controls, also extraordinary inspections of marketplaces in Prague and in border regions were carried out in cooperation with other surveillance authorities, connoisseurs of goods and the Police. Some inspections were held on the weekends. Almost 2500 pieces of various textile products, clothing accessories, watches and other goods illegally marked with trademarks were taken. Sale of these products would cause damage to the owners of the trademarks amounting to m...