Based on the following reasoning, the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection ruled that the defendant infringed the prohibition on unfair commercial practices.
The defendant, the President held, when rejecting the complaints did not give any merits-related reasons for rejecting the complaint and did not give its opinion relating to the essence of the complaint, especially of the kind of fault concerned. It was repeated by the court that the defendant's response to a complaint was limited to a reference to the relevant legal provisions which require to prove that the nonconformity of the product existed at the moment of purchase of the product. This was especially the case in events were the nonconformity was communicated by the consumer outside of the 6 months period, relevant for the burden of proof.
The court subsequently ruled that the result of this conduct of the defendant is that consumers may have resigned from withdrawing from the contract. It was also emphasized by the court that the defendant is a respectable player on the market on which it operates. By providing maintenance and repair services relating to products sold, the defendant arouses the consumer's trust and expectation that the defendant will professionally handle complaints and repairs and thus, consumers are likely to be more eager to choose the defendant as the supplier of the mentioned products.
In the opinion of the court, the concerned practice therefore distorts or is likely to distort the economic behavior of the average consumer whom it reaches or to whom it is addressed. Hence, the activity of the defendant was found to be unlawful.
In determining whether the defendant's practice violated the collective interests of the consumers, the court repeated that the collective interest of consumers does not need to refer to an unlimited number of consumers which cannot be individualized since the lack of individualization does not make it impossible to create a group of consumers who are characterised by the same feature. In the case at hand, the defendant violated the interest of a potentially unlimited group of consumers, i.e. all consumers, as potential consumers of the defendant, which could be exposed to the defendant's unfair practice.