§5.11.2 Goods made to the consumer’s specifications or clearly personalised

Article 16 (c) the supply of goods made to the consumer’s specifications or clearly personalised; ‘Goods made to the consumer’s specifications’ are defined in Article 2 of the CRD as ‘non- prefabricated goods made on the basis of an individual choice of or decision by the consumer’. Recital 49 of the CRD refers to ‘tailor-made curtains’ as an example of goods made to the consumer’s specifications or which are clearly personalised. Since this rule is an exception from the more general rule of the CRD giving consumers the right of withdrawal from distance/off-premises contracts, it should be interpreted narrowly. So, this exception should cover, for example: — goods, for which the consumer has provided specifications, such as measurements for furniture or the size of a fabric; — goods, for which the consumer has requested specific personalised features, such as a particular design for a car that is made to order or a specific component for a computer, which has to be individually procured for that particular order and which was not part of the trader’s general offer to the public; — address labels with the consumer’s contact information. Specification/personalisation in this context should be taken to mean that the goods are, in principle, unique and produced according to the individual wishes and requirements stated by the consumer and agreed with the trader. In contrast, where the consumer simply makes up the goods by picking from the standard (pre-set) options provided by the trader, it should not be possible to speak of either ‘specification’ or ‘personalisation’ in the narrow sense of this provision. Thus, the exception would not apply in the following examples: — choosing furniture with specific colour or texture by selecting from the manufacturer’s catalogue; — car with additional equipment, selected from the manufacturer’s catalogue; — a set of furniture on the basis of standard elements. Furthermore, the exception does not apply to service contracts leading to tangible outcomes. In case C-208/19 NK (Individual house project) the Court held that the contract between an architect and a consumer, according to which the former is required to prepare the designs for the construction of a new building, cannot be regarded as falling under Article 16(c) CRD. Although the designs could be provided in tangible form (on paper or digital), the subject matter of the contract is an intellectual service – architectural design, and the subsequent delivery has only ancillary function (139). This reasoning of the CJEU highlights the importance of the creative process for the occurrence of the tangible result as a decisive factor for the classification of the contract. Similar reasoning could be applied to other intellectual services (e.g. provision of accounting or legal advice, or family event photography) whose results could be presented in tangible form. In contrast, where the exception applies, the restriction on withdrawal from contracts for the supply of goods made to the consumer’s specifications or clearly personalised is absolute and does not depend on whether the trader has started working on the order or not. This was confirmed in case C-529/19 Möbel Kraft, were the Court observed that this is the only interpretation of Article 16(c) CRD that could ensure legal certainty, which is one of the objectives of the Directive, as noted in Recitals 7 and 40 thereof (140). The existence of the consumer’s right of withdrawal would be at issue if it depended on the state of progress of the performance of the contract by the trader, a state of progress of which the consumer is not, as a general rule, informed and over which he or she has, a fortiori, no control. Moreover, such interpretation would not be reconcilable with the obligation of the trader to provide clear pre-contractual information.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-09-07