Under Turkish law, the legal status of all consumer-related transactions is governed by the Consumer Protection Law. This legislation is the main protection for consumer rights, although it has been enhanced by additional supplementary legislation. The Consumer Protection Law, officially known as Law No. 4077, was enacted on Feb. 23, 1995 and came into force after it was published in the Official Gazette on March 8, 1995. In 2003 the statute underwent amendments to increase protection and to harmonize it with European Union legislation.
In order to be protected by this legislation, you should be a consumer as it is defined by this law. The definition of a consumer is outlined in Article 3 of the Consumer Protection Law. According to this definition, the consumer can either be a real person or a legal entity purchasing, using or benefiting from goods or services without having any professional or commercial purpose. If the business dealing with the good or service generates money for the user, then the user is not considered within the scope of the law. In practice, this usually means that the consumer is the end user. “Legal entities" referred to in Article 3 of the Consumer Protection Law are deemed to be charitable foundations and associations that are not entitled to carry out any commercial activities.
The Consumer Protection Code (CPC) makes explicit the implied terms of the contracts which we make in our daily life. As these implied terms are governed by the statute, they are effective regardless of the intention of the parties. Although the CPC lays our a great variety of rights in different situations, here we only focus on the purchased of defective goods.
An example:
A consumer bought a keyboard without any warranty from shop “X”. When the consumer started to use the keyboard, he noticed that one of the keys only worked when depressed with greater force than the other keys. According to Consumer Protection Law, a defect is a factual or legal condition that affects the usage value of the goods in a way that the consumer can not receive the benefit he or she expected, or is not in correspondence with the description expressed or implied by the seller, and or the advertisement with which it had been sold proved not to correspond to the standards of that type of goods.
In this case, the consumer has three options:
Refund: He or she returns the goods to the seller and receives a full repayment for the price of the purchase.
Exchange of the goods: He or she returns the goods and receives another item of the same type in return which is not defective.
Discount of the price proportionally: He or she negotiates a discount on the cost of the item proportional to the defect.
The consumer must notify the seller as to the defect, stating his preferred one of the three options above within thirty days of the actual purchase. The vendor / provider must accept the consumer’s requirements. These options address defects which exist or are evident at the time of purchase.
When the item becomes defective later, this is called a ‘Hidden Defect” in the terms of Turkey’s Consumer Protection Law. In the case of a hidden defect, the consumer may exercise his or her rights for a period of two years from the date of purchase even where no written warranty exists.
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