July 13 ‘dark day’ for online shoppers
p2pnet news | politics:- Friday the thirteenth was a “dark day for online shoppers in Canada,” says the Public Interest Advocacy Centre’s John Lawford.
Now, thanks to a Supreme Court of Canada ruling, consumers can’t rely on the courts to protect them from marketplace abuses, says Philippa Lawson, director of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Clinic, University of Ottawa.
Quebec’s Union des consommateurs, supported by CIPPIC and PIAC, had argued Dell Computer’s online agreements with consumers were one-sided and unfair, “effectively killing any chance at class actions that allow consumers to band together to challenge unfair industry actions and contracts,” says PIAC, going on:
Although Quebec made such clauses unenforceable, not all provinces in Canada have similar protection, says Lawson, stating:
“Such clauses should not only be unenforceable, as some provinces have made them, but simply prohibited as being categorically unfair.”
And, “The Supreme Court is woefully out of touch with the reality of electronic commerce,” states PIAC counsel criticising, inparticular, the court’s assertion that a, “simple hyperlink to a separate page of highly detailed contractual terms and conditions should bind a consumer to all those conditions when the consumer is presented with an order page online’.
Lawford says contrary to the Supreme Court’s assertion that such external links are the responsibility of the consumer to hunt down, the trend in electronic commerce law in Europe and in the practice of many online retailers has been to make such terms an integral part of the ordering process to make sure they come to the attention of consumer in fact, not in theory.
It’s, “troubling that the court would hold consumers to terms and conditions that were not even brought to their attention”, says Lawson.
“Again, the message is clear: it’s up to legislatures to protect consumers from abusive and unfair terms of sale or service that are only notionally agreed to by consumers. It’s time that our laws reflected the reality of electronic commerce, not just some legal fiction.”
Also See:
Public Interest Advocacy Centre – Bad Luck for Consumers, July 13, 2007
Canadian Internet Policy and Public Clinic – Consumer Groups Decry Court Decision Upholding Mandatory Arbitration Clauses, July 13, 2007
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