April 17 2008
Web Sweep part two
Thanks to all of you who sent in your web sweep reports. It looks like the sweep of 500 businesses wasn’t quite as deep as we thought it was. However that’s not going to stop us showing you a helpful article from lawyers Eversheds on how to avoid another one.
Last week we ran a story about the follow up to the December dawn web sweep raids by the trading standards service, where we pointed out that “a virtual raid on 530 sites is quite a lot of work, and then the time involved in producing this report must have also been quite a lot of work.” Well we were wrong, having looked at a report we can’t see why the sweep report took so long to write up. From what we can see the sweep was more an attempt to buy one product from each site while making a few notes on an Excel spreadsheet.
However it’s still a serious subject and probably shouldn’t be treated so lightly, an just to prove it here’s Paula Barrett, head of the data protection group at international law firm Eversheds take on the sweep.
“The OFT’s take on e-tailing is that just because you are buying on line doesn’t mean you should have fewer rights than if you walked in to shop on the high street. You would know who you were dealing with and wouldn’t be charged for returning faulty goods, for example. It’s important therefore to revisit your website terms and check you are making common mistakes such as:
- Make sure you give the correct name of your business and a full address - not just a PO Box number - so people can know who they are dealing with and where they are based.
- If you are going to levy additional charges these must be added when the price is first shown - not just at the checkout. 40% of the websites reviewed failed on this point.
- Consumers are entitled to a 7 day post purchase cancellation right (with some limited exceptions) have you provided for this and is your returns policy consistent with your terms of supply.
- On the cancellation of a contract, any sum paid by the consumer must be repaid as soon as possible and, in any case, within thirty days of cancellation. The full price paid for the goods and the cost of delivery must therefore be refunded. In the Web Sweep a significant 56% excluded the original cost of delivery from the refund. The most common mistake in their review.
- You can’t oblige the consumer to pay for the cost of return if the goods are faulty. If you want to be able to charge for postage a supplier may (except where goods are returned because they are faulty) impose a reasonable charge to cover postage costs incurred by the supplier this has to be clear in the contract and the consumer has to get notice of this in advance as part of the written confirmation relating to the right to cancel.
- If the consumer has, before cancelling the contract, received the goods, the consumer will be under a duty to restore those goods to the supplier and, in the meanwhile, to retain possession of the goods and take reasonable care of them. Many e-tailers however seek to impose higher duties on return and care of the goods.
And it’s not just these Regulations you need to consider. The Web Sweep also looked at compliance with the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations, the Consumer protection Act, Price Marking Order, Sales of Goods Act to name but a few other pieces of relevant legislation. Many consumer facing sites are still adopting terms and conditions which include terms which are inconsistent with these regulations, particularly on limits on liability.
Overall the analysis seems to show that whilst there is a growing awareness about the regulations, some e-tailers (even some of the larger ones) are still falling down on the detail. It is interesting to note that the results have not only been communicated to the offending e-tailor but also to the relevant enforcement authorities. Whilst there has to date been guidance issued, there has been little visible enforcement activity around the Distance Selling Regulations and this has led to complacency by some e-tailors about the legal compliance issues around e-tailing.
