Economic Affairs Minister Micky Adriansens (VVD) will send the 2023 Consumer Agenda to the House of Representatives on Wednesday. Better protection against aggressive and deceptive sales at the door and online forms the backbone.

Not quite, but there will be an additional threshold in the form of a mandatory pause for reflection. The sale will not take place unless you confirm the transaction by email or letter sometime after your door visit. For example, the locker wants to prevent you from immediately falling for a door seller chat scam and getting stuck on something.

Once agreed in writing after the conversation at the door, the statutory fourteen-day cooling-off period will begin. “We have to better protect people who are less powerful with words,” says Adriaansens. Door sales are often already annoying, you are faced with an unwanted offer. This is not ideal for a fair deal. We now restrict that. And we will speed up, we can arrange it ourselves like Holland. “

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This site wrote earlier that the energy sector in particular is making a lot of noise. Sellers often paint a very rosy picture, whining and insisting until they get it. The victims are the most vulnerable, mostly the elderly. Door to door marketing is picking up again after a lull in the Corona years and now permanent contracts are possible again after electricity and gas prices have fallen.

The sector itself promised improvement, and municipal bans were possible locally, but, according to the Council of Ministers, this is not enough. The House of Representatives would like to go further, this week called on Parliament to ban the sale of energy contracts at the door. The Cabinet thinks it is a sympathetic idea, although it goes against the principles of the free market, says Adriaansens: “Markets are everywhere, online and in the square, sometimes at the door. Above all, I want a level playing field, with this move I think we will arrange That’s good for energy sales.”

In many games – like Candy Crush – you can get ahead by spending money. This encourages addiction and costs users, according to politicians. Adriaansens therefore wants to try via Brussels to tighten European rules on “in-app purchases”, for example with more information and age limits. Moreover, special treasure chests – loot boxes — was declared completely taboo, following a suggestion on the subject by CDA Member of Parliament Henri Pontenpal.

A famous example of a popular game with loot box It’s Fifa Ultimate Team, the soccer game where you build a team of the best players, which you buy with those treasure chests. But you never know in advance which players are in your treasure chest. That lottery side is wrong: , that loot boxes We want to ban it completely, you don’t even know what you’re paying for. We also want to better regulate other purchases in those online games. We prefer to do these topics in the context of the European Union, but we’ve noticed there’s a lot of support for that as well.”

This is the intention. You know it: Getting a (trial) subscription to a streaming service, magazine, or fitness club is super easy online, but how do you get away with it? This is often more complicated. The treasury wants to set new rules, so cancellations can also be done at the click of a button that’s easy to find on the website. France and Germany already have such a legal obligation to provide information, and similar rules should also apply in the Netherlands.

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