By Barbara Morgan, 13 September 1999 12:04
NEWS International guidelines to protect consumers who buy goods on the Internet are long overdue according to the global federation of consumer organisations. Consumers International (CI), a worldwide consortium of 245 consumer organisations in 111 countries, recently released a survey that examines ecommerce practices and has recommended legislation to protect global consumers when purchasing over the Internet. The consortium plans to debate guidelines for electronic commerce at a Paris meeting of the Consumer Policy Committee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) this week. The European Union-funded study found that ecommerce is plagued by problems, according to Louise Sylvan, vice president of CI and chief executive of the Australian Consumers' Association. Sylvan listed a litany of complaints and examples, such as: the large number of returns long delays for refunds and even initial delivery - including 10 per cent of orders not arriving. In addition: 73 per cent of trade failed to give crucial contract terms almost half products ordered arrived without receipts more than 25 percent gave no address or telephone number and another 24 percent were unclear about the total cost of the item that was ordered. "The important point is to get some baseline protection in place so that consumers can have confidence in using electronic commerce," said Sylvan. International Data Corporation has predicted that Internet commerce as a whole will be worth more than one trillion dollars by 2003, as more consumers shop online and the Web becomes a preferred avenue for business-to-business transactions.
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