What you can expect a sock to do

1. Your statutory rights

Your legal rights under Dutch law are not limited to a fixed number of years. How long a product must last depends on what you can reasonably expect from it. Any commercial guarantee we offer is in addition to those rights, never instead of them.

In practice this means a product must have the properties you can expect from it given its description, its price and the way it is meant to be used. A USD 10 everyday sock and a USD 52 wool sock are not held to the same expectation, and neither is held to a number of years.

We offer no commercial guarantee of a fixed length, because one would only cause confusion about a right that already exists and is not time-boxed in that way.

2. Who has to prove what

If a defect appears within twelve months of delivery, it is presumed to have been present at delivery, and it is for us to show otherwise. After twelve months, your statutory rights continue, but you may be asked to show that the defect was present at delivery rather than caused by use. This is the reversal of the burden of proof under Dutch law, and it is a rule about evidence — not an expiry date on your rights.

3. Normal wear, with examples

Socks are consumable textiles. They abrade against a shoe every time they are worn, and abrasion is not a defect. The following are normal wear:

• The sole thinning. The ball and heel wear first. On our cotton-led lines it happens sooner than on the polyamide-led lines, because the fibre is shorter — this is stated on those product pages before you buy.
• Pilling. Small balls of fibre forming on the surface, particularly on wool and on high-recycled-cotton products.
• Gradual loss of cuff tension. Elastane relaxes over dozens of wash cycles. A sock that grips less after a year of weekly washing has behaved normally.
• Shade drift on wool. Reprocessed wool varies by up to 5% between batches, and washing shifts it slightly further.
• Shrinkage after a hot wash or tumble drying on a product whose page and label both say 30 °C and dry flat.

4. Defects, with examples

These are defects and we deal with them:

• A seam coming undone. A toe seam or cuff seam opening under normal wear is a manufacturing fault, whenever it happens.
• A hole somewhere other than a wear point. A hole in the leg, the cuff or the instep is not abrasion.
• Elastic failing quickly. A cuff that will not stay up after a handful of wears, or that has snapped internally, is a defect and not relaxation.
• A knitting fault. Dropped stitches, a run, a needle line or a laddering column present from the first wear.
• Composition not matching the label. If the sock is not what the composition table on its product page says it is, that is a defect regardless of how the sock performs.
• Colour transferring onto skin or shoes under normal dry wear.

5. What we do about a defect

Write to support@starsocknl.rest with your order number, a description and, if you can, a photograph. We answer within two working days.

You are entitled to repair or replacement, free of charge, within a reasonable time and without significant inconvenience. Socks are rarely worth repairing, so in practice we replace them. If replacement is impossible or disproportionate, or fails, you may ask for a price reduction or for the contract to be dissolved with a refund.

We do not ask you to pay return postage on a product we accept as defective. We do not require original packaging for a defect claim.

6. Care, and what voids nothing

Wash at 30 °C, do not tumble dry, do not bleach. Wool products go on a wool cycle at 30 °C and are dried flat. These instructions are on every product page and sewn into every cuff.

Following care instructions is not a condition of your statutory rights. Washing a sock at 60 °C does not cancel your rights over a seam that was never sewn properly. It only means the shrinkage that followed the hot wash is not something we caused.

7. Related pages

• Herroepingsrecht — changing your mind, as opposed to a fault.
• Verzending en retour — how to send something back.
• Materialen — what each product is made of and how the figures were arrived at.