Consumentenbond

From now on, Ticketmaster will refund service fees along with ticket prices if an event is canceled, consumers association Consumentenbond announced, RTL Nieuws reports.

Dutch consumers are increasingly annoyed by the junkmail they find in their postboxes. These advertisements usually end up unopened in the recycling bin, according to a survey by consumers' association Consumentenbond. The association calls on companies to look for a more customer- and environmentally friendly alternative for getting consumers' attention.

Consumers association Consumentenbond wants the Dutch government to introduce the Nutriscore label on Dutch products. Nutriscore is a color-coded label that shows at a glance how healthy or unhealthy a product is, with ratings from A (healthy) to E (unhealthy). 

Organic products in the Netherlands are becoming more affordable, according to a price comparison by consumers' association Consumentenbond. Five years ago organic products were on average twice as expensive as regular ones. Now buying organic is 63 percent more expensive, AD reports.

The association compared 115 products from 13 regular supermarkets and four organic stores. 

Dutch consumers' association Consumentenbond took down over 2,700 fake online stores by getting in touch with their hosting providers late last year. This brings the total of fake online stores shut down to over 4,500 in 2018, the organization announced, RTL Nieuws reports.

The association calls the fake online stores a plague for Dutch consumers. Consumentenbond tracked them down through, among other things, language errors, strange web addresses and tips from observant users.

PostNL was flooded with complaints in the run-up to Pakjesavond on Tuesday. Hundreds of customers were worried that their Sinterklaas gifts would not arrive on time, AD reports.

The fact that Sinterklaas is increasingly buying his gifts online has its disadvantages. Online shops, sorting centers, and package deliverers were overflowing with packages this past week, according to the newspaper. 

Many Dutch companies do not deal carefully with their customers' data, consumers association Consumentenbond concludes after studying five large companies in different industries. Even companies that you won't expect collect data on a large scale to sell to third parties, the association warns, BNR reports.

Consumentenbond looked at PostNL, Prenatal, Sanoma, Ticketmaster and Zalando. They were more or less randomly chosen, which means they are not necessarily the worst in the market when it comes to handling customer data.

It's Black Friday today. And the American tradition of offering massive sales and discounts on the Friday after Thanksgiving seems to now also be firmly rooted in the Netherlands. According to research agency Motivaction, more and more Dutch shops, businesses and consumers are participating in the discount circus, NOS reports.

In Rotterdam, it's not only shops offering discounts. The municipality teamed up with retailers, hotels and museums to make an entire weekend of it, according to the broadcaster.

Almost all health insurers in the Netherlands have so-called "clone policies" among their offer, consumers' association Consumentenbond warns. These are policies from the same provider that have different names, but only actually differ in price. That's not allowed in the Netherlands, but insurers get away with it by offering these policies through subsidiaries or intermediaries, according to the association, RTL Nieuws reports.

A "scarily high" 31 percent of sushi meals that are delivered to customers' homes contain too much bacteria, according to consumers association Consumentenbond. This is caused by poor hygiene in the preparation of the meals, the association concludes after testing 160 sushi samples from 20 restaurants in five cities, NU.nl reports.

Poor hygiene standards include using dirty cutting boards and employees not washing their hands before working with the food. In many cases the delivered sushi was fresh, the Consumentenbond added. 

Several prominent Dutch health websites are not careful enough with their visitors' privacy, according to consumers organization Consumentenbond. A number use cookies without permission and some use an un-encrypted connection, NU.nl reports.