The Consumer Arbitration System, regulated by Royal Decree 231/2008, is intended to meet and resolve in a binding and executive way for both parties, complaints or claims of consumers and users, without prejudice to administrative and judicial protection.

The following situations are excluded from the object of arbitration:

  • Those in which there is a firm and final judicial resolution.
  • Matters inseparably linked to others on which the parties have no power of disposition.
  • The issues in which the Prosecutor Service must intervene.
  • Issues that involve intoxication, injury, death or reasonable evidence of crime.

The Arbitration System is made up of the Consumer Arbitration Board and the arbitration boards.

The Galician Consumer Arbitration Board is an organization linked directly to the Xunta de Galicia through the Galician Institute of Consumer Affairs. Its headquarters is in Santiago de Compostela and it is composed of a president and a secretary.

In order to meet arbitration applications, arbitration boards are constituted, which are the bodies responsible for knowing and dictating the arbitration award on each matter subject to arbitration.

WHAT DOES IT CONSISTS?

Consumption arbitration is an extra-judicial and voluntary way that allows resolving, in a quick, effective and free way, the disagreements that may arise between consumers / users and business owners.

The advantages of the Consumer Arbitrage are:

  • Speed: processing is done in a short period of time.
  • Effectiveness: Resolved through arbitration award, without the need to go to the ordinary legal channel.
  • Free: processing is free; Only the practice of some expert tests, carried out at the request of the party, can involve some small cost.
  • Voluntaryity: both sides freely decide whether it is the Consumption Arbitrage that resolves their disagreements.
  • Executive: the arbitration award is obligatory, as if it were a judgment.

HOW TO ADHERE?

The consumer and business associations can adhere to the system, to collaborate in the promotion and Administration of the Consumer Arbitration, subscribing the corresponding commitment of membership, in accordance with the standard model that accompanies the agreement of constitution of The Galician Consumer Arbitration Board, published through resolution of July 8, 1994.

[Click here to see the addresses of colleges and arbitration boards]