Research On The Consumers' Rights Protection In Shopping Online

Nowadays the rapid development of information technology drives the swift growth of cyber economy,which brings a new trading way--cyber shopping, different from the traditional shopping habit. The cybershopping mainly refers to regard the internet as the transaction platform on which sellers and tradingprocess is fulfilled without paper. Being high effective, low cost, fast, and convenient are the characteristicsof the whole process. With these features, the cyber shopping is becoming more and more popular andbeing used widely. Meanwhile, compared to the traditional shopping habit, the cyber shopping has someunique features, such as being virtual,cross-regional in space time, and cyber technical, etc. Besides,objectively, there lack laws and legislations and governmental proper supervision in cyber shopping,whichmakes various risks exist in cyber shopping. These risks not only influence the rapid growth of cybereconomy but also bring huge challenge to laws for protecting consumers' rights in current cyber shopping.The contents of consumers' rights in cyber shopping mainly include such ones as right of personalsecurity, right of return, right of damages, and standard form of contract, etc, among which the right ofpersonal security lists the first one. What is different from the traditional shopping is that the protection ofconsumers' personal security is not paid enough attention but that of consumers' property is put forwardinstead. At the same time, consumers' privacy protection in the process of network shopping has alsobecome an indispensable part in consumers' security right. Secondly, it is the influence on the consumers'right to know in cyber shopping. It is impossible for the cyber shopping consumers to sellers face to face incyber trading process. So consumers' only way to know about commodity is cyber advertisements.However, what we often see is various cyber advertisements with abundant contents. In this case, it is veryhard for consumers to make proper judgment on commodity or service only based on own experience,which will easily cause consumers' legal rights to be in disadvantage when they buy something throughinternet. Thirdly, cyber shopping consumers' rights of return and exchange also face a difficult situation.For example, can consumers return or exchange when they receive their commodity and find those goodsare different form what the advertisement shows? Will this be regarded as the violation of the treaty?Should sellers or consumers pay for these fees? There are no definite regulations for these cases in Chinesecontemporary laws. In addition, another problem in cyber shopping is standard form of cyber contract. In cyber shopping, treaty for consumers is always made by sellers. So consumers can not refuse but have toagree on everything in the treaty if they want to buy what they want. Otherwise they can not trade normally.This will make consumers impossible to show their true thoughts in cyber shopping, causing their manypersonal rights to be damaged. Of course, the details above are only part of the whole contents. There arealso some other problems existing in cyber shopping, such as right of option, right of claim, consumers'issues, etc.At present, most developed countries like America, Germany and Japan and other internationalorganizations such as Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the European Unionall have built relevant regulations to protect the consumer's rights in cyber shopping. For example, in theUnited States, there is A Framework for Global Electronic Commerce, Unified Computer Information andExchange Act; in Germany, the Federal Information and Telecommunications Service Overall ConditionConstruction Regulation Law, Electronic Signatures Act; in Japan, the action platform; in EU, the In theContract of Remote Consumer Protection Instructions. In contrast, in China we have all manner ofdrawbacks in the legislation on protecting cyber consumers' interests, of which the most obvious one is thatwe haven't established the corresponding law and regulation systems to protect the consumers' rights. Forproblems which may damage consumers' interests, we can only use items in Consumer Protection Laws,Contract Law, and Products Quality Law to solve relevant problems. Therefore, we should establish andperfect laws and regulations in cyber shopping as soon as possible to protect the legal rights of cyberconsumer better.On the basis of advanced experience from the legislation of developed countries and other internationalorganization as well as the reality of cyber shopping in our country, this thesis provides measures to protectconsumers' rights and interests in cyber shopping. It includes establishing and perfecting the networkshopping legislation system, improving the Governance mechanism of the government to network shopping,strengthening the self-discipline of the network economic provider, strictly striking the false onlineadvertising, protecting individual privacy, constructing exchange network system, building the social creditsystem, issuing shopping trust sign, etc.