Ignorance rather than deliberate ill-will seems to lie behind the many problems, and the businesses have expressed their willingness to rectify them.
Many Rules
The DCO Hagen Joergensen said:
“Of course it is not acceptable that the businesses do not know the law; having said that, I admit that there are many and complicated rules to acquaint oneself with”.
He continued:
“So we have made a commented check list for businesses who deal with e-commerce. It is my hope that they will make good use of it so that they will make a better impression should I want to do another check-up in the future”.
Hagen Joergensen points out that the consumers should not let the results of the investigation worry them too much, however.
Specific “Snags”
Some of the problems that we encountered are relevant for the individual consumer. These include:
Situations where a consumer has overlooked an illegal condition which requires him to return unwanted purchases in its original, unopened package – and so he obviously fails to do so
Situations where a consumer – who wish to make a complaint due to defects - fails to observe a time limit set by the business but in breach of the Sales of Goods Act
Situations where a consumer - on making a complaint or wishing to return his purchase – fails to follow the procedures stipulated by the business.
Major Problems
- The investigation showed that the major problems with the law were related to the following areas:
- Lack of information about terms of contract, including the cooling-off rights;
- Validity of the right to make reservations and disclaimers;
- Information about the Sales of Goods Act;
- The distribution of newsletters/emails; and
- Information about how the contract is kept and its accessibility.
Even some members of the Danish E-Commerce Association, who commit themselves to comply with the law, had difficulties with meeting the standard.
Background
What objectives did the investigation have?
- To inform the e-trade business about the requirements set out in the law;
- To get an idea of what type of rules the traders fail to observe;
- To enforce the law, possibly by means of bringing actions against specific businesses which have failed to meet the law.
We chose the websites on the basis of the following criteria:
- Danish websites only
- Websites with a certain amount of traffic and customers
- The businesses come from a variety of trades
- Both online/e-traders as well as businesses which also have physical stores have been chosen for the investigation
- Both websites which have invested in the E-Commerce Association label and websites that have not are included in the survey.
We have taken a look at 15 websites of which 6 of them had the E-Commerce Association label.