an bhraistint orm gearán a fuaraigh mé ar an mheáin shóisialta a chur i mo chlárú gearán

Is a complaint via Instagram just as valid a complaint

Yes, a complaint that comes in via Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp or another social media channel counts substantively as a complaint about product safety. The channel through which a complaint arrives is not relevant to the question of whether that complaint must be taken into account; what matters is what the complaint concerns. A message from a consumer reporting that a product poses a hazard, breaks in a way that suggests unsafe operation, or has caused injury is substantively a product safety complaint — regardless of whether it arrives by email, telephone, review form or a direct message on social media.

This obligation applies to the manufacturer, and this is a role in which more parties fall than is often thought: anyone who sells a product under their own name or brand is themselves considered a manufacturer, even if the product has been purchased elsewhere and only their own logo has been added to it. For that party there is an obligation to record complaints about product safety. A distributor — a party that resells products of another brand without making any changes to them — does not have this specific registration obligation in the same way; for that role the emphasis lies elsewhere in the chain. Which role exactly applies determines therefore what must be done with an incoming complaint, and that makes the question of which role in the chain is being fulfilled the first step before the complaint itself becomes relevant.

Áit arna dhíorthú ó: Airteagal 9 den Rialachán

Article 9 of Regulation (EU) 2023/988 requires manufacturers to maintain a record of complaints about the safety of their products, as part of the internal procedures for product safety that this provision prescribes. In doing so, the regulation makes no distinction based on the channel through which a complaint arrives — it is about the content of the report, not about the medium. The NVWA confirms on its page on product safety and GPSR that these internal systems are part of the obligations that follow from the regulation. What such a record looks like in practice and what exactly must be included in it is addressed under the establishment of a complaints register and fits within the broader framework of an internal compliance system.