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Nintendo faces legal action over ability to brick Switch 2s whenever they want (www.dexerto.com)

submitted 2 days ago by Sunshine to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Procon-SP is a state customer protection organ. It's more like "São Paulo's watchdog" than "Brazil's watchdog". However since the state in question is populous and has relatively high purchasing power per capita, typically megacorpos beeline towards it anyway.

I'll coarsely translate here the news from Procon-SP's site. Emphasis mine in all cases, as I want to highlight something.

Translation

Procon-SP notified Nintendo to request changes in clauses deemed abusive, present in contracts made with Brazilian customers. The main complain involves the unilateral and unjustified cancellation of service subscriptions.

This showed a wider problem: Nintendo lacks formal representation in Brazil. This absence hinders conflict intermediation and the conduct of customer protecting organisations.

To handle this case, Procon-SP had to contact the headquarters of the business in USA. Only then the business named a law office in Brazil, but solely to handle the relevant clause.

The absence of formal representation in the country is an important warning to customers. Without such legal presence, the protection predicted by the Customers' Defence Code is limited.

"The existence of legal representation within Brazil needs to be one of the criteria [potential customers] take into account to decide their purchases, specially so for digital services or foreign platforms", says Álvaro Camilo (Procon-SP's Service and Orientation director). "Without such groundwork, Procon organs cannot act in full power, given different countries have different laws".

This precaution applies both to abusive clauses and common problems, such as delivery delay or service failure. When the business is not registered in Brazil, often there is no way to sue it.

In the last years, the number of purchases in international sites grew sharply in the country. However many of those platforms conduct businesses with no local judicial link.

Even for smaller purchases, there's a real risk: the customer gets no goods, no answer, no support. Procon-SP recommends to be extra careful, doubly so for sites handling fashion, electronics, and accessory items.

Before purchasing something, it's essential to verify if [a business] has CNPJ [i.e. it's considered a legal entity in Brazil], a real address in Brazil, and support channels; those pieces of info are fundamental so Procon-SP can act in case of problems.

Nintendo informed that'll analyse the request from the organ, and that it'll answer it within 20 days. Until then, Procon-SP recommends customers should report irregularities through the site www.procon.sp.gov.br.

See the bolded parts? São Paulo's Procon is basically telling people "Don't buy stuff from Nintendo, it's an irregular business in Brazil."

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Am I correct in seeing a similarity between this and the Xitter drama from 2024? Something about X not having a physical presence in Brazil to sue for damages, and Brazil was going to block it as a result.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

In both cases you have businesses using the lack of legal representation to avoid following local laws. But that's it; everything else is quite different.

Xitter - blocked after orders of the federal court, because there was a legal representative but he was explicitly removed to avoid following the court decisions.
Nintendo - a state customer protection organ is requesting legal representation, to address violations of customer laws. Nintendo assigned a temporary representative, to handle this specific issue.

I don't think Procon organs have the power to ban the sales of an imported good within their states. But even if they do, note that this would only apply to the state (in this case São Paulo). Plus Nintendo is being considerably more tactful than that braindead idiot called Musk.