Complaint management

Are you a customer who would like to make a complaint about an accredited body or about DAkkS itself? Then please get in touch with us directly. Learn here about the cases in which DAkkS examines your complaint, how we deal with it, what needs to be considered in its formulation and how complaints should be submitted to us.

Using the complaint procedure of the accredited body

Under the requirements of DIN EN ISO/IEC 17011, DAkkS must in the first instance – wherever possible – give the conformity assessment body the option to examine a complaint within its own complaint procedure. Please therefore always first contact the complaints office of the body in question before submitting your complaint to DAkkS.

Make a complaint to DAkkS

As part of its monitoring and surveillance work, DAkkS ensures that accredited conformity assessment bodies comply with the relevant requirements under accreditation law. If you are a customer or other third party who would like to make a complaint about a body accredited by DAkkS or about DAkkS, you can therefore contact us with your concern.

Written form required

Please make your complaint in writing to ensure that we can address your concern. You can submit complaints by post or using our contact form. Please always state the facts of the case and the reason for the complaint. Please include supporting evidence. Without this information, we cannot process the complaint.

Complaint form

How DAkkS examines your complaint

As a rule, we examine complaints in several steps:

  • In the first instance, we examine whether the facts of the case as described fall within the scope of an accreditation and whether it is possible to judge them on the basis of the information provided and the documents submitted.
  • If there is any ambiguity, we will take further steps to resolve the matter. As a rule, we do this by requesting a statement from the conformity assessment body in question and forward the complaint to it.
  • In the case of complaints about DAkkS, the person or unit concerned is requested to submit a statement.
  • The accredited conformity assessment body or the person or unit concerned within DAkkS reports to us with an explanation of the reasons for its decision.
  • If the examination shows that the decision of the body is not objectionable under accreditation law, we will inform you of this conclusion as the complainant.
  • If however it becomes apparent that our intervention as the supervising authority is required, we will continue our efforts to resolve the matter with the body concerned. If there is sufficient evidence, we can for example initiate appropriate special monitoring of the body. However, for reasons of confidentiality, we cannot provide information about the outcome of these efforts.
  • In the case of justified complaints against DAkkS, we will initiate appropriate corrective measures if deemed necessary.
  • As a complainant, you will nevertheless always receive a final letter concerning your personal complaint.

Consent to forwarding of the complaint

As a rule, it will be necessary to ask the conformity assessment body concerned about the facts of the complaint. This is most easily done by forwarding the letter of complaint directly to the body. A condition for this is that you allow us to disclose your identity. Please grant us your consent together with your submission of the complaint. We guarantee that investigations and decisions concerning complaints addressed to DAkkS itself or assessors working for DAkkS will not lead to discriminatory actions against the complainant.

Forwarding of the complaint in anonymous form

If you do not consent to disclosure of your identity, we will protect your anonymity to the greatest extent possible, as we are committed to the effective protection of whistleblowers. We should however point out that despite our confidential handling of the complaint, the accredited body may be able to identify you from the details of the case.

All information and details provided to us with the complaint are used without restriction for the review of the complaint, and may therefore also become known to the conformity assessment body. If you do not wish this with respect to specific information, please do not share it.

Legal limits for complaints

Please note the statutory limits on our work:

  • DAkkS cannot make binding decisions on individual disputes. This can be done only by the competent courts, which resolve disputed legal opinions in a binding manner, ruling for example that companies have an obligation to make payment.
  • DAkkS does not offer general legal advice.
  • DAkkS has the right to intervene vis-à-vis the company only if the facts of the case as described fall within the scope of a valid accreditation. Information on the scope of accreditation of each individual company is available from the database of accredited bodies. For issues going beyond this, for example questions of competition law, DAkkS has no competence.

How you receive a response to your complaint

We will keep you up to date on the status of your complaint and respond to you as quickly as possible. Please note that in many cases a statement from the company, person or unit concerned must be requested and that experience has shown that its submission and examination will take some time.

Your contact

Complaints office

Please submit a complaint by post or online via our complaint form:

Deutsche Akkreditierungsstelle (DAkkS)
Spittelmarkt 10
10117 Berlin
Germany

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