Rospotrebnadzor asks to return business inspections in case of consumer complaints

Rospotrebnadzor proposes that the government work out the criteria for resuming business inspections, the newspaper writes “News”. The agency offers to return them in the event of mass consumer complaints.

Rospotrebnadzor has prepared a report on the enforcement practice of the law on the protection of consumer rights, in particular Article 16 – “Unacceptable terms of the contract that infringe on the rights of the consumer, prohibitions and obligations imposed on the seller (performer, owner of the aggregator).”

The department notes that over 10 years the service has identified more than 56 thousand violations of this article. The maximum number of violations occurred in retail trade and financial services – 15.1 thousand cases and 9.5 thousand, respectively.

The department emphasizes that almost every second contract analyzed by Rospotrebnadzor infringed on the rights of consumers. Often, companies took into account paid services in the contract without the consent of consumers, or prescribed the opportunity to refuse the contract unilaterally. In addition, there have been cases when entrepreneurs imposed fines on buyers.

A moratorium on business inspections was introduced in the spring of 2022. They were retained only in relation to some organizations for sanitary-epidemiological, veterinary and fire control and supervision in the field of industrial safety. In 2023, it was decided to maintain the moratorium on scheduled inspections for another 8 years.

In September, the head of the Ministry of Economic Development stated on reducing the number of business inspections in 2023 by 15% year on year.

About the government’s plans to qualitatively improve Russian small businesses – in the material “More is better”.

Alexandra Goroshilova