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Loading ...IDEC Calls for National Do-Not-Call List
Saturday, March 28th, 2009Brazil’s premier national consumer group, the Consumer Defense Institute (IDEC), is calling for a national do-not-call registry to allow Brazilian consumers to stop telemarketing calls to their phones. Last October São Paulo State adopted a skeletal law (“skeletal” because the governor line-item vetoed much of it) creating such a registry for consumers in that state. […]
PROCON: Firms Still Not Obeying Customer Service Rules
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009Recently Brazil’s Justice Ministry (MJ) warned firms that they better get fully into compliance with the customer service decree (“SAC Decree” or “call center decree”) and its related portarias. Now the consumer protection authority (PROCON) of Brazil’s economic powerhouse, São Paulo (SP), reports on where compliance stands after the Ministry warning and its efforts to […]
São Paulo Rejoins the National Consumer Information System
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009In a recent post on Brazil’s consumer agencies putting consumer complaints on the internet, I mentioned that the National System of Consumer Defense Information (Sistema Nacional de Informações de Defesa do Consumidor – SINDEC) behind the move is missing a few states, most notably São Paulo (SP), the state representing some 40% of the national […]
Justice Ministry to Service Firms: Improve Customer Service, or Else
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009Regulated service sectors are not complying with Brazil’s new rules on customer service, despite being given a (brief) grace period in order to bring their operations into line. So declared the Justice Ministry’s (MJ) Department of Protection of Consumer Rights (DPDC), which is now handing out fines, naming names, scrutinizing practices and issuing warnings. The […]
Brazilian States Publicize Consumer Complaints
Tuesday, October 7th, 2008In September the 21 Brazilian state consumer agencies (known in Brazil as “Procons”) belonging to the National System of Consumer Defense Information (Sistema Nacional de Informações de Defesa do Consumidor – SINDEC) opened (mostly on the internet) their registries of consumer complaints, including their rankings of which firms were the subject of the greatest number […]
SP Governor Proposes Very Tough Smoking Ban
Thursday, September 4th, 2008On August 28 — Brazil’s National Day to Combat Tobacco — José Serra, the Governor of the state with the biggest market in the nation, São Paulo, sent to the state legislature a bill would ban smoking in areas of collective use, whether public or private. The bill looks to be one of the toughest […]
Regional Economic Integration and Consumer Protection
Thursday, October 11th, 2007Next week the Research Group on International and Comparative Consumer Law (Groupe de recherche en droit international et comparé de la consommation – Gredicc) of the University of Quebec at Montreal (Université du Québec à Montréal – UQÀM) will be hosting an interesting international conference on "Regional Economic Integration and Consumer Protection in the Americas […]
Santa Catarina Industry Concerned About the Environment
Friday, August 10th, 2007Recently the industry federation of the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina (SC) released the results of a special survey about SC-based industry’s environmental concerns conducted with the help of the National Confederation of Industries (CNI). The survey updated one done in 2005 on the same issues. 131 companies responded to the 2007 survey. Among […]
Consumer Protection Pages Added to the Temas Toolbox
Thursday, May 17th, 2007As promised during my “Introduction to Consumer Protection in LAC” series, I have adapted and amended those posts to convert them into standalone pages now easily accessible through the Temas Tools link directory in the righthand column. These are: Overview of Consumer Law in LAC Overview of Consumer Authorities in LAC Overview of Consumer NGOs […]
Consumer Protection in LAC III – Consumer Agencies in LAC
Wednesday, April 18th, 2007To make up for missing World Consumer Rights Day (March 15), I promised to give you a five-part overview of consumer protection in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). In Part I, I looked at how consumer agencies and consumer NGOs in the region celebrated the Day. In Part II-A I examined how intergovernmental bodies […]