'We are having a hard time with some consumer electronics producers due to the recent amendments to the federal law on competition,’ Centri Maintenance Center’s Technical Director Leonid Khavroshin said to UrBC.

The amendments came into force on December 12, 2007 and now give a customer the right to complain about the quality of a product not only to the producer and the seller but to the importer as well, who is now responsible for the quality of the product, too.

According to Yekaterinburg Consumer Rights Committee Chairman Andrei Artemiev, it is usually the seller that the dissatisfied customer goes to in case a problem occurs, but the sellers can protect themselves through more rigorous terms of contracts they sign with the producers.

'Some consumer electronics producers like Toshiba, Vitek, and LG, for example, don’t have any operation and maintenance centers in Sverdlovsk Region, so it’s us who have to handle the problem. As these companies don’t provide any maintenance, we will probably stop working with them,’ Mr. Khavroshin said.