New German Law: Perfumes

Good job trying to find the source of that info!

Unfortunately I cannot, but I understand your frustration! I noticed that Ebay is rather unfriendly to buyers and anything but impartial in a conflict between buyer and seller. It's the seller who pays for the services.

'Nobody in the german ebay could tell me about this new german law'. I don't deal with Ebay often, but I am not surprised. I wanted to know exactly what their due dates are on payments, claims, etc. - a very basic question. I still have no clear answer, but a Belgian trader had made them send me a menacing reminder to pay. That happened 8 days after the deal had been concluded and this period also included the extended easter holidays.

Restricting the sale of contents of unsealed packages was an issue in Germany and elswhere following criminal (blackmail) poisoning of food, beverages and toothpaste. This new kind of crime started more than a decade ago. So the 'new laws' may in fact be quite old - just reactivated to meet somebodies needs. It's still worth wile to look at the legal precautions taken since then. I wouldn't exclude that some of this could also apply to merchandise sold on auctions. But even then - it could well be that we have to differentiate between regular trade and the (occasional) disposal of personal property. Testers are one thing, decants another. But don't we all just look too much at the buyers aspect of trading with decants? There is money in that! Still: the original producer's liability clearly ends with the sale of his original product, and the product is the unit of juice and (original) packaging. Somebody decants a few ml or 3 OZ - this is no longer the same product, product liability is nil, and the special rules for the cosmetics industry do not necessarily apply to second hand and decanted perfumes.

It would be easy to eliminate the problem if there ever was one with decants: traders, producers, websites could have samples available (at cost or for free) and customers would not search for them at auctions. But what happens in our daily practice? Perfume sales clerk will only hand them out as candy once you bought something. Hand them out on on demand? No matter whether it's Lutens or designers samples - the counters have invariably just ran out at the moment. It may be the same items which are sold by certain Ebayers at one dollar a piece or 10$ in a package!

The sale of stolen goods via internet auction is clearly illegal. But nobody can legally stop me to sell Adidas products which I have legally acquired, just because the world knows that 30% (whatever) of those goods leak out at the place of production. If Adidas and the cosmetics industry want to produce in distant countries they have to face the risks they run doing it. I didn't realize that the German perfume industry is all that powerful. I wouldn't really mind if Boss testers were banned as long as I can get hold of genuine ones from Creed and Lutens (halfway joking)! But aren't all testers banned from Ebay Germany? - The argument may hold as a motivation, but never serve as a legal argument.