13 ms·

Sounds like an excellent law to stop the horrid practices in so many online shops. Let's hope a form of this law spreads throughout Europe and the U.S. This ca

by epaga 12y ago

Sounds like an excellent law to stop the horrid practices in so many online shops. Let's hope a form of this law spreads throughout Europe and the U.S. This caught my eye, however: "A failure to comply cancels the transaction. You can get your money back and keep the goods. If the sale was for a service or a digital download, the contract is cancelled and no further payments are due." Wow. Seems like it would make a ton of financial sense to go hunting for online shops located in the U.K. that are not complying with this law yet and take advantage of this, helping them learn "the hard way"?

Someone1234 12y ago
It is a good idea, but in practice getting them to return your money before you return the goods might involve a small claims court. This directive actually has a lot less "teeth" than you'd think from reading this article. It is good that it exists, but aside from class action style lawsuits, few companies will get hit by individual customers seeking refunds+goods.
- Pxtl 12y ago
  Perhaps including the credit cart "dispute charges" process into this discussion would help?
  - tehwebguy 12y ago
    That was my guess as to where enforcement takes place. But this is already a great way to "reeducate" terrible retailers since there are often expensive chargeback fees even if the vendor wins the dispute ($15-25 in the US)
    - Silhouette 12y ago
      Chargebacks are a significant risk as merchants, because if you start to rack up too many of them then it won't just be the individual chargeback fees for each of those transactions that you have to worry about. As I understand it, you can also wind up paying higher processing costs generally, or even being kicked by your payment services and/or not accepted by other services in the future if your track record gets bad enough. Then again, even my tiny little start-up manages to advertise an honest recurring subscription fee, tax-inclusive, with no other charges added on top later. In our entire time trading, I think we've had exactly one person complain that they didn't realise it was a monthly fee when they signed up. I'm not sure how they managed to miss it -- we tell them right next to the price, in full size text, throughout the sign-up process. But even so, we just refunded their second payment and cancelled their ongoing subscription to avoid the argument, and that was the end of the matter. We never got as far as any sort of formal dispute/chargeback process via the customer's card company. So I guess I don't have much sympathy if the kinds of big businesses mentioned in this article can't figure it out and wind up suffering for it under these new laws. These "dark patterns" are obviously deceptive and obviously unfair to consumers, and I'm glad the big businesses are going to have to play by the same rules as the rest of us in the future.
rmc 12y ago
> Let's hope a form of this law spreads throughout Europe Ummm... this is a EU wide law. The UK, as a member state of the EU, had to implement it into UK law (that's how EU laws work). This is already the law of the land in all EU countries. Nearly all good consumer rights laws are done at the EU level.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  You misread the quote. They said "Europe" not the EU. So presumably they were hoping it would spread to non-EU European countries also.
  - pdpi 12y ago
    I find that it's increasingly the case that "Europe" gets used in place of EU in much the same way as people will say "America" when they mean the USA.
    - Someone1234 12y ago
      Then people are "increasingly" using it incorrectly. Europe is a continent, the EU is a political alliance. There are too many countries within Europe but not in the EU to use the terms synonymously. For example: Albania, Andorra, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Norway, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Vatican City I think it is pretty interesting that I got heavily downvoted for pointing out that the person above me conflated Europe and the EU and then tried to correct someone else based on that misunderstanding. This place is turning into Reddit more and more day by day, people are using the down arrow as a "I disagree" button... Which is exactly why Reddit has gone right down the toilet.
      - kome 12y ago
        Croatia is part of the EU.
        12y ago
anigbrowl 12y ago
Jeepers. I can think of several big US commercial sites that would turn unprofitable overnight.
switch007 12y ago
The part about keeping the goods seems unbelievable. I've skimmed the act, but I can't find a reference to keeping the goods. It's very easy to link to sections in acts, so I don't know why the author did not add references.
mseebach 12y ago
> You can get your money back and keep the goods My guess is that's a journalistic misinterpretation of what canceling a transaction means. It's very common in the law that when a transaction is cancelled, not only do you have to return the product, if you've used it, the seller can make a reasonable deduction in your refund. If the consequence indeed is as stated, it's not like customers would benefit much in the long term, as the newly introduced risk would render most online shopping totally uneconomical: what if someone successfully sues you for utilizing a "dark pattern", now all your customers can demand a refund "for free" -- without having to return the product? Lose all your past revenue AND your product stock overnight? That's unheard of as punishment in commercial law.
- twic 12y ago
  On the contrary, this appears to be exactly what Ms Burns suggests: In my book I talked about “trading trolls” – people who would surf the web specifically looking for noncompliant sites so that they can place an order, get the stuff, report the site for noncompliance, get their money back, and keep the stuff. After all, if the site is breaking the law, they have no recourse there.
  - mseebach 12y ago
    I think I know what is meant now. The directive (http://ec.europa.eu/justice/consumer-marketing/rights-contracts/directive/index_en.htm http://ec.europa.eu/justice/consumer-marketing/rights-contra...): (60) Since inertia selling, which consists of unsolicited supply of goods or provision of services to consumers, is prohibited by Directive 2005/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2005 concerning unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices in the internal market (‘Unfair Commercial Practices Directive’) (2) but no contractual remedy is provided therein, it is necessary to introduce in this Directive the contractual remedy of exempting the consumer from the obligation to provide any consideration for such unsolicited supply or provision. The way I read that is if you add an item to the customers cart automatically, then you have no legal claim to get paid for that item. The sale of the stuff you actually wanted is still valid.
- rmc 12y ago
brey 12y ago
This almost exists already, in a slightly different form - it's the same principle as the unsolicited goods laws codified in eg. the UK's Consumer Protection Regulations[1]; if I send stuff to someone without it being asked for, they legally own it and I can't insist on payment. Same thing now applies to bundling unwanted extra crap in with a real order - it's just the extra stuff which may not be charged for. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Protection_(Distance_Selling)_Regulations_2000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Protection_(Distance_S... > If goods are sent to a consumer without a contract asking for them, the "recipient may [...] use, deal with, or dispose of the goods as if they were an unconditional gift to him" which happens to be an incorporation of a 15-year old EU directive: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:31997L0007 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:319... > Article 9 > Inertia selling > Member States shall take the measures necessary to: > - prohibit the supply of goods or services to a consumer without their being ordered by the consumer beforehand, where such supply involves a demand for payment, > - exempt the consumer from the provision of any consideration in cases of unsolicited supply, the absence of a response not constituting consent.
harrybr 12y ago
Hi Everyone, in response to the great reception her interview has received on HN, Heather has created a discount code for her ebook. Use the code 'hackernews' at the checkout to get 50% off. If you work on any ecommerce products based within the EU then it's a worthwhile purchase. Get the ebook here: http://www.consumerrightsdirective.info/ http://www.consumerrightsdirective.info/

by epaga 12y ago

Someone1234 12y ago

It is a good idea, but in practice getting them to return your money before you return the goods might involve a small claims court. This directive actually has a lot less "teeth" than you'd think from reading this article. It is good that it exists, but aside from class action style lawsuits, few companies will get hit by individual customers seeking refunds+goods.

Pxtl 12y ago
Perhaps including the credit cart "dispute charges" process into this discussion would help?
- tehwebguy 12y ago
  That was my guess as to where enforcement takes place. But this is already a great way to "reeducate" terrible retailers since there are often expensive chargeback fees even if the vendor wins the dispute ($15-25 in the US)
  - Silhouette 12y ago
    Chargebacks are a significant risk as merchants, because if you start to rack up too many of them then it won't just be the individual chargeback fees for each of those transactions that you have to worry about. As I understand it, you can also wind up paying higher processing costs generally, or even being kicked by your payment services and/or not accepted by other services in the future if your track record gets bad enough. Then again, even my tiny little start-up manages to advertise an honest recurring subscription fee, tax-inclusive, with no other charges added on top later. In our entire time trading, I think we've had exactly one person complain that they didn't realise it was a monthly fee when they signed up. I'm not sure how they managed to miss it -- we tell them right next to the price, in full size text, throughout the sign-up process. But even so, we just refunded their second payment and cancelled their ongoing subscription to avoid the argument, and that was the end of the matter. We never got as far as any sort of formal dispute/chargeback process via the customer's card company. So I guess I don't have much sympathy if the kinds of big businesses mentioned in this article can't figure it out and wind up suffering for it under these new laws. These "dark patterns" are obviously deceptive and obviously unfair to consumers, and I'm glad the big businesses are going to have to play by the same rules as the rest of us in the future.

rmc 12y ago

> Let's hope a form of this law spreads throughout Europe Ummm... this is a EU wide law. The UK, as a member state of the EU, had to implement it into UK law (that's how EU laws work). This is already the law of the land in all EU countries. Nearly all good consumer rights laws are done at the EU level.

Someone1234 12y ago
You misread the quote. They said "Europe" not the EU. So presumably they were hoping it would spread to non-EU European countries also.
- pdpi 12y ago
  I find that it's increasingly the case that "Europe" gets used in place of EU in much the same way as people will say "America" when they mean the USA.
  - Someone1234 12y ago
    Then people are "increasingly" using it incorrectly. Europe is a continent, the EU is a political alliance. There are too many countries within Europe but not in the EU to use the terms synonymously. For example: Albania, Andorra, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Norway, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Vatican City I think it is pretty interesting that I got heavily downvoted for pointing out that the person above me conflated Europe and the EU and then tried to correct someone else based on that misunderstanding. This place is turning into Reddit more and more day by day, people are using the down arrow as a "I disagree" button... Which is exactly why Reddit has gone right down the toilet.
    - kome 12y ago
      Croatia is part of the EU.
      - 12y ago

anigbrowl 12y ago

Jeepers. I can think of several big US commercial sites that would turn unprofitable overnight.

switch007 12y ago

The part about keeping the goods seems unbelievable. I've skimmed the act, but I can't find a reference to keeping the goods. It's very easy to link to sections in acts, so I don't know why the author did not add references.

mseebach 12y ago

> You can get your money back and keep the goods My guess is that's a journalistic misinterpretation of what canceling a transaction means. It's very common in the law that when a transaction is cancelled, not only do you have to return the product, if you've used it, the seller can make a reasonable deduction in your refund. If the consequence indeed is as stated, it's not like customers would benefit much in the long term, as the newly introduced risk would render most online shopping totally uneconomical: what if someone successfully sues you for utilizing a "dark pattern", now all your customers can demand a refund "for free" -- without having to return the product? Lose all your past revenue AND your product stock overnight? That's unheard of as punishment in commercial law.

twic 12y ago
On the contrary, this appears to be exactly what Ms Burns suggests: In my book I talked about “trading trolls” – people who would surf the web specifically looking for noncompliant sites so that they can place an order, get the stuff, report the site for noncompliance, get their money back, and keep the stuff. After all, if the site is breaking the law, they have no recourse there.
- mseebach 12y ago
  I think I know what is meant now. The directive (http://ec.europa.eu/justice/consumer-marketing/rights-contracts/directive/index_en.htm http://ec.europa.eu/justice/consumer-marketing/rights-contra...): (60) Since inertia selling, which consists of unsolicited supply of goods or provision of services to consumers, is prohibited by Directive 2005/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2005 concerning unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices in the internal market (‘Unfair Commercial Practices Directive’) (2) but no contractual remedy is provided therein, it is necessary to introduce in this Directive the contractual remedy of exempting the consumer from the obligation to provide any consideration for such unsolicited supply or provision. The way I read that is if you add an item to the customers cart automatically, then you have no legal claim to get paid for that item. The sale of the stuff you actually wanted is still valid.
rmc 12y ago

brey 12y ago

This almost exists already, in a slightly different form - it's the same principle as the unsolicited goods laws codified in eg. the UK's Consumer Protection Regulations[1]; if I send stuff to someone without it being asked for, they legally own it and I can't insist on payment. Same thing now applies to bundling unwanted extra crap in with a real order - it's just the extra stuff which may not be charged for. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Protection_(Distance_Selling)_Regulations_2000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Protection_(Distance_S... > If goods are sent to a consumer without a contract asking for them, the "recipient may [...] use, deal with, or dispose of the goods as if they were an unconditional gift to him" which happens to be an incorporation of a 15-year old EU directive: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:31997L0007 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:319... > Article 9 > Inertia selling > Member States shall take the measures necessary to: > - prohibit the supply of goods or services to a consumer without their being ordered by the consumer beforehand, where such supply involves a demand for payment, > - exempt the consumer from the provision of any consideration in cases of unsolicited supply, the absence of a response not constituting consent.

harrybr 12y ago

Hi Everyone, in response to the great reception her interview has received on HN, Heather has created a discount code for her ebook. Use the code 'hackernews' at the checkout to get 50% off. If you work on any ecommerce products based within the EU then it's a worthwhile purchase. Get the ebook here: http://www.consumerrightsdirective.info/ http://www.consumerrightsdirective.info/