Dear readers,
some of you will remember a post from the spring concerning unfair contract terms in the German energy retail market.
In that decision, the CJEU had laid a set of conditions for the validity of terms allowing long-term providers to unilaterally increase the product or service's price; it had also suggested, we inferred, that the specific term involved in the case under scrutiny was likely to be invalid. Such invalidity, it was submitted, would have easily paved the way for a series of reimbursement requests from some (hundred thousand) RWE customers, who had been subject to a long series of price increases over a not so long timespan.
Today, the Bundesgerichtshof (case Az.: VIII ZR 162/09) awarded the original plaintiffs, 25 consumers supported by the Verbraucherzentrale, restitution rights for a total of 16.128,63 Euro. It is easy to imagine that more requests will be filed in the coming weeks, granting the concerned provider a really heated August.
In that decision, the CJEU had laid a set of conditions for the validity of terms allowing long-term providers to unilaterally increase the product or service's price; it had also suggested, we inferred, that the specific term involved in the case under scrutiny was likely to be invalid. Such invalidity, it was submitted, would have easily paved the way for a series of reimbursement requests from some (hundred thousand) RWE customers, who had been subject to a long series of price increases over a not so long timespan.
Today, the Bundesgerichtshof (case Az.: VIII ZR 162/09) awarded the original plaintiffs, 25 consumers supported by the Verbraucherzentrale, restitution rights for a total of 16.128,63 Euro. It is easy to imagine that more requests will be filed in the coming weeks, granting the concerned provider a really heated August.
