Consumer Protection Review
Sorry but lack of resources and community participation meant we could not respond to this consultation.
“Our consumer law is well developed and provides a good level of protection for consumers. But our legislation has accumulated over decades. We want to make sure that it is well-targeted in the protection it provides for consumers. We also want to make sure that the law does not impose unnecessary costs on business – which ultimately consumers pay. This review is therefore looking at how we might update our regime.”
As this document is 60 pages long and we don’t expect you guys to read it all, we have extracted below only the questions most relevant to the ORG community. Please review the questions and leave your comments, preferably supported by evidence, for us to use in our submission, which will be made by 31 July 2008. Of course, if you wish to comment on other aspects of the document then please do! Suggest that anyone interested in helping out starts by reading the foreword and introduction, which (as you’d expect) locate the review in terms of government policy priorities. Although its jargon-heavy, it will help put your mind in the right place to respond. And if there’s demand for it to help you get involved, then we’ll expand the extracts available for comment on this page.
Cancellation rights
Question 8: Given the increase in online transactions, are the cancellation and information rights currently provided in distance selling regulations appropriate? How significant are the benefits to consumers and how much does it cost business to provide these?
Education
Question 14: What are the possible advantages in making consumers more aware of their rights and routes to redress? In particular:
- How should this be done?
- To what extent (and in which areas) could this improve the willingness ofbusinesses to improve consumer protection voluntarily thus reducing the need for public intervention?
- To what extent is it more realistic to aim to ensure consumers know where to go to find out about their rights when they need to, rather than know their rights?
Provider information
Question 15: Does more need to be done to make information on individual businesses’ performance available to consumers? If so, which types of information would be most appropriate and useful?
- Would there be benefit in creating a single search facility which allowed consumers to search for existing positive and negative information on local traders?
- How, if at all, could we enable membership of a common brand of scheme whilst embracing diverse sizes and types of business?
Internet Enforcement
Question 21: Could enforcement of internet issues be handled differently than at present? If so,how?
Civil and Criminal Enforcement
Question 22: How best can we achieve the proper balance between the use of civil and criminal enforcement sanctions? How do we ensure that enforcement is proportionate and appropriate?
Question 23: Should TSS have access to the full range of civil sanctions provided for in the Regulatory Enforcement Sanctions Bill as an alternative to criminal prosecution?
Consumers may not even think about looking for information on their rights if they’re not aware that they have them in the first place.
Even if consumers know where to find out about their rights, ultimately someone has to make the information available to them. Who is to fulfil that role/take on that responsibility? What obligations will there be on the information provider to make clear their own interest/bias in the area they’re providing information on?
No. Not for government to do it anyway.
Can’t make out what it meant by this question but it sounds as though it might be referring to yet another scheme that businesses have to pay through the nose for yet does very little for them. If so, shouldn’t be done.
Such as..?!
Business conducted online should be subject to the same laws as business conducted offline and consumers should have the same rights, too.
Provide consumers with information that makes it clear what the differences are between the two routes, what the pros and cons are with each and examples of which is likely to be most appropriate for common issues.
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