Do you know your online shopping rights?
According to the Office of Fair Trading, nearly a third of the 500 retail websites it surveyed are breaking laws designed to protect online shoppers.
The OFT survey of December 2007 was checking to see if websites complied with consumer protection laws, such as including a physical address on their sites, telling shoppers about their rights, and being transparent about pricing. It found that 15% of sites neglected to tell customers that they could cancel an order up to seven days after receiving the goods and 31% of sites appeared not to refund the full cost of returned goods which is an integral part of the Distance Selling Regulations. It also found that 40% of sites were not transparent in their pricing, not telling customers about additional charges until the customer was in the checkout stage of the transaction. 14% of sites did not provide a physical address.
Previously, the OFT has estimated that the UK internet shopping market is worth £21.4 billion a year and that 20 million people shopped online in 2006, a third of them spending over £1,000. It also estimates that shoppers pay up to £100 million a year in unexpected charges. Many consumers do not realise, for example, that if they return goods within the seven day cancellation period then the retailer is not entitled to make a "restocking" charge, not even if they say they can in the small print of their Terms and Conditions.
Internet shopping is still a variable experience. We always try to notify our customers when legislation comes out that may affect them, such as the Distance Selling Regulations, The E-Commerce Regulations, and the Companies Act, and as far as we can see, all of our Skill Zone customers are up to date with the law. If you want to see an example of an online shop which we think adheres to all the regulations, is easy to use and provides totally transparent pricing, have a look at Silver Sox:
www.silversox.co.uk/socks.shtml
This client is a good example of how a small business can leverage the Internet. It sells a product which is new to the UK, a small range of a highly specialised, high technology, high quality socks with a very high silver content. Silver is a natural anti-bacterial and anti-fungal agent so its great for keeping infections at bay. With an unusual product like this, we felt it was really important to keep the shopping experience as clear and straight-forward as possible and make the shopping process as painless as possible.
26th March 2008
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.