In practice, online traders are often troubled by situations where a customer fails to collect goods sent to them by the seller. This occurs both in cases of delivery of goods immediately after the conclusion of a contract of sale and in cases of delivery of goods to the customer following repair of goods under complaint. This legal circular will therefore be devoted to how the law views these situations, specifically the Civil Code.
The question of delivery of goods pursuant to a contract of sale is regulated in general terms by the provision of Section 2159 of the Civil Code. This provision has recently been amended (the new wording has been in force since 06/01/2023). Subsection 2 of the Civil Code addresses generally the question of when the trader’s obligation to deliver goods is fulfilled: “Where the seller is to send the thing to the buyer, it shall be handed over to the buyer at the moment when the carrier hands it over to the consumer or to a person designated by him.” This means that it is entirely up to the trader to properly deliver the goods to the consumer, whereby any fault on the part of the carrier (late delivery, damage to the thing during transport) shall be at the seller’s expense. From the delivery of the goods, the well-known 14-day period for withdrawal from the contract of sale by the consumer without giving reasons begins to run.
In connection with our issue, it is appropriate to mention that the consumer has an obligation to collect the goods upon their delivery (within the agreed time limit for delivery of the goods). The consequences of breach of this obligation by the buyer are regulated by the provision of Section 2159(3) of the Civil Code. “Where the buyer fails to collect the thing … the seller shall be entitled to remuneration for storage. Where the parties do not agree on its amount, the usual amount shall be deemed agreed.” This means that if the buyer fails to collect the goods, the seller acquires the right to payment of remuneration for storage of the goods in an amount agreed in advance. The amount of this remuneration for storage may thus be agreed with the consumer, for example within the terms and conditions of business (ideally at a reasonable amount).
In our view, the seller’s right to payment of remuneration for storage of goods should not cease even in the event of subsequent withdrawal from the contract of sale by the consumer. The situation may therefore be favourable for traders particularly in those cases where the goods have been paid for by the customer in advance, since the right to remuneration for storage should be capable of being set off against the consumer’s right to return of the purchase price of the goods. On the other hand, where the price of the goods is paid by means of cash on delivery, the trader does not have the customer’s financial resources at his disposal (and would have to enforce his claim if it were not paid voluntarily by the consumer). In any event, however, it is at least possible to use the existence of such a claim by the trader (for storage of goods) in communication with those customers who fail to collect the goods.
Identical legal regulation then also applies in situations where the customer fails to collect goods following their repair within complaint proceedings, when the provision of Section 2170(3) of the Civil Code provides that: “Where the buyer fails to collect the thing within a reasonable time after the seller has notified him of the possibility of collecting the thing after repair, Section 2159(3) shall apply mutatis mutandis.” This means that for these cases too it should be possible to agree with the customer the amount of remuneration for storage of goods.
Josef Aujezdský
This text was originally prepared by the law firm Mašek, Kočí, Aujezdský in cooperation with the Association for Electronic Commerce (APEK) as legal circular No. 02/2023 intended for members of that association.
This text was translated from Czech to English using an AI translator.