Fundacja Konsumentów

Foundation of Consumers (FC) is a dynamically developing non-governmental organisation that in just a few years has grown into one of the main consumer organisations in Poland. The Foundation had a long and close collaboration with the Association of Polish Consumers (SKP) until closure of the Association which has chosen FC as its successor.

The Foundation is a group of people who care about helping consumers. Our mission is to empower consumers and enable them to make informed decisions that meet their real needs.

We undertake initiatives on key issues important for the better functioning of the consumer protection system. The results of our independent product tests are intended to help consumers make informed choices of goods (reports are available at testy.konsumenci.org). We provide free legal advice within the portal http://konsumenci.org/porady, where in a few minutes the consumer can by himself find an answer to the problem related to the purchased goods (over 160,000 pieces of advice). In 2023 we are introducing a completely new, easy to use, fast and effective way to enforce consumer rights: the online complaint box.

From 2015 until the end of 2021 the Foundation was running a Consumer Helpline - the largest nationwide counseling project financed from public funds (Office of Competition and Consumer Protection). This flagship consumer advisory project in Poland is a national call center, free of charge for all consumers, open weekdays, 10 hours. We provided over 88,000 advices to individual consumers yearly. Our services were highly regarded by consumers themselves - the overall satisfaction rate of Consumer Helpline exceeded 90% in each of independent studies conducted on a regular basis.

From 2019 we conducted a series of consumer tests checking buckwheat and millet for residues of glyphosate. The tests showed that the maximum levels of glyphosate residues were exceeded in many products. A media storm which was ignited with hundreds of publications and millions of viewers, has pushed a debate to deal with the issue of misuse of glyphosate by the farmers and supported a petition to ban glyphosate.

In 2020-2021 the Foundation, as the first ever Polish consumer organisation, was leading  the EU funded project “The same but different” on limiting dual quality and strengthening consumer organisations (funded by the European Union’s Consumer Programme). Here we aimed at enabling Baltic region’s consumer organisations to run food tests (checking the quality of tea and coffee) and empowering consumers by providing them with trustworthy information. Our tests of tea surprisingly discovered exceeded Maximum Residue Level (MRL) for the trimethyl-sulfonium cation in most of the tea samples.

In 2023 we are introducing a completely new service to Polish consumers: the online complaint box. Consumers need an easy to use, fast and effective way to enforce their rights. This project will provide it to them by creating and promoting a free of charge new online “complaint box” enabling consumers to publicly complain against a company. Every time a complaint is made it will be sent to a company’s e-mail address and published on our website (unless a private option is chosen). The company will have a possibility to reply and hopefully in most cases settle the dispute with a consumer.

Founded in 2013
BEUC member since 2021
Website: https://konsumenci.org