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AMO SR issued another commitment decision on the field of repair and maintenance of motor vehicles

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In November 2016 the Antimonopoly Office of the Slovak Republic, the Division of Abuse of a Dominant Position and Vertical Agreements (hereafter "the Office") initiated the administrative proceedings in the matter of a possible agreement restricting competition in the field of providing after-sales services related to selling motor vehicles in the territory of the Slovak Republic.

The administrative proceedings was initiated following an investigation in the field of providing after-sales services related to selling motor vehicles of a certain brand. Based on the documentation gathered, the Office suspected that a participant to the proceedings might have infringed the Act by concluding vertical agreements on making a guarentee conditional to performing repair and maintenance only in service stations belonging to authorized network. Thereby the independent (unauthorized) services should have been disadvantaged.

The decision relates to the provisions of official documents issued by the producer/importer of the brand's vehicles, which allow refusing a guarantee only based on visiting an independent service station, diregarding the quality of the repair/maintenance performed by the given service station.

During the administrative proceedings the participant to the proceedings proposed certain commitments by accepting of which it might be possible to terminate the administrative proceedings. As the Office came out mainly from the provisions within board literature (service books, guarantee conditions, etc.), the participant to the proceedings proposed changing the provisions of documents concerned along with informing customers (personally and also on web page of a given brand of vehicles) with valid guarantee that it is not conditioned by performing repair and maintenance exclusively in authorized brand services.

The Office terminated this administrative proceedings by a commitment decision. For this decision it was decisive that the proposed commitments eliminate the competition concerns identified by the Office, namely sufficiently effectively, in a short time and for lower administrative costs. The effective cooperation from the side of the participants to the administrative proceedings positively influenced the achieved results.

This decision is already the seventh commitment decision on this field. All decisions are available at http://www.antimon.gov.sk/prehlad-pripadov/ (available only in Slovak).