Services for consumers
Consumer services refer to services offered mainly to private individuals for use during leisure time, in hobbies or other activities.
Consumer services include:
- amusement parks and funfairs
- outdoor and indoor playgrounds
- gyms
- indoor swimming pools and spas
- beaches
- ski resort services
- programme services (e.g. adventure services or snowmobile safaris)
- horse riding services
- public events
- equipment hire services for consumers, e.g. cabin, sports equipment or tool hire.
A service offered by an association is not a consumer service, if it is only offered to the association's own members for other than business purposes. For example, aerobics lessons organised by a sports club is not a consumer service, if only the club members can participate in the activity and it is not organised for any significant financial gain.
Are you a consumer service provider?
A service provider is a private individual, enterprise, municipality, organisation or other party that provides, markets, offers, sells or otherwise delivers or supplies services for the use of consumers.
However, private individuals that offer a service for other than business purposes are not service providers. Associations or organisations are not considered service providers, if they only offer services for their own members for other than business purposes.
Example: Pentti sells husky safaris for tourists as a part of the services of a major tour operator. Pentti is a service provider, and he must comply with the requirements of the Consumer Safety Act.
Example: The neighbour’s children occasionally come to groom and ride the horse that Saija owns. This is not a business for Saija, and she is not a service provider. If Saija establishes a riding stable and starts to offer riding lessons, her role changes from a private individual to a service provider. In that case, she must comply with the requirements of the Consumer Safety Act.
How does Tukes monitor the safety of consumer services?
Tukes carries out risk-based and spot-check monitoring of the safety of consumer services. The monitoring methods and authority have been described in the page on monitoring.
Which aspects of consumer services are not under Tukes’s authority?
The Consumer Safety Act is a general law that yields to other legislation. This means that if specific legislation includes more detailed provisions on the safety of a certain issue, the Consumer Safety Act does not apply to monitoring said issue. However, in many cases specific legislation and the Consumer Safety Act are applied in parallel. For example, the public health monitoring by municipalities includes monitoring the hygiene of public swimming pools under the Decree on Pool Water, and Tukes monitors the safety of consumers in the swimming pool under the Consumer Safety Act.
Tukes cooperates with many other authorities in monitoring consumer services.
