Services Standards: Defining the Core Consumer Elements ... - ANEC

Services Standards
duties in standard-making, and rights and duties in challenging the publication
of standards by the European Commission.
2. Examples of best practice
There are four initiatives which come near to what consumers might expect
from such voluntary efforts, the first is EN 14804 on language tours, the second
is the French/German initiative on residential home AFNOR XF 50-058 and DIN
77800 assisted living for the elderly, the third is BS 8463:2005 ‘Specification for
customer billing practice’ and the fourth EN 125222-2 on furniture removal.
The first initiatives are more or less covering the full range of items which allow
to measure, to our understanding, of what best practice might constitute. This is
especially the case for education and skills (parameter 1), to equipment and
premises (parameter 2), the pre-contractual stage (parameter 3), to the content
of the contract (parameter 3 a), the post-contractual stage (parameter 4) and
the monitoring and inspection (parameter 6). However, even these identified
best practice are not very helpful when it comes down to define the consumer
rights and remedies (parameter 3 b). The availability of enforceable rights
however, will decide over the use and usefulness of the whole exercise of
standard-making.
The French AFNOR standard on services for resident people, XF 50-056, has
set a unique highlight in that it contains references to the Code de la
Consommation 426 , that is the law that defines the consumer rights and duties.
BS 8463:2005 ‘Specification for customer billing practice’ fills an important gap
left by the EC regulator in that the standard provides for a fully fledged billing
scheme with regard to services for which periodic billing is made.
The third example to be mentioned concerns standardisation on furniture
removal. It is not so much the completeness of the standard EN 12522-2, but it
is innovate character which deserves attention. The set of standards constitutes
a rare example where the quality of services is not only circumscribed by a set
of items, but where there are concrete rules foreseen on how the quality of the
relevant items could and should be processed.
III.
The minimum or baseline requirements in standard-setting
“Minimum” or “baseline” requirements aid those who are involved in standardsetting
to have clear-cut criteria at hand by which to measure whether the
envisaged technical standards take the consumer interests into account. The
426 See Chapter V, III, 4, a).
193