Safety of rental of products

Everyone needs to rent a product from time to time, but renting products can often cause problems. Products available for rent often have faults for the following reasons:

• they are very old;
• they are not maintained as they should be;
• they do not come with personal protection equipment ;
• they do not come with a clear manual.

Products that are rented are often dangerous or at least risk being dangerous to users or onlookers, such as circular saws, chainsaws, cutters etc. Other rental goods can only be used in spaces or areas especially equipped for that purpose, such as skating or go-karting.

The rental company must always give the customer the necessary information for them to be able to use the requisite personal protection equipment.

Laws and regulations

Rental companies' obligations

Laws and regulations

The general provisions and safety requirements of the law of 9 February 1994 on the safety of products and services are supplemented by the specific requirements set forth in the Royal Decree of 4 March 2002 regarding the rental of products.

Customers’ obligations

At the time of rental, the rental company must provide the following information to the customer:

• the manual for the rented product; 
• the safety measures to take for use of the rented equipment, communicated verbally and through an attached document;
• a legible notice displayed at a location visible to the customer, in the event that the rented equipment is designed to be used on the premises and buildings or on the customer’s land.

The documents provided or the warnings must be written in the language(s) of the linguistic region where the product is rented. 

The rental company provides the customer with the personal protection equipment that is recommended in the manual for the rented product or which is mandatory.