Kuneva: EU to Probe Electronics Retailers on Web

The European Commission on Wednesday launched a major probe into websites that sell electronic goods.

From EBS:
At a press conference today in Brussels, Meglena Kuneva, Member of the EC in charge of Consumer Protection, announced the results of an EU-wide investigation - involving 26 Member States and Norway and Iceland - into misleading advertising and unfair practices on websites selling consumer electronic goods.

The clampdown covered 369 websites selling six of the most popular electronic goods to consumers in the EU - digital cameras, mobile phones, personal music players, DVD players, computer equipment and game consoles. It covered 200 of the biggest websites selling electronic equipment in the EU as well as more than 100 websites which were targeted on the basis of consumer complaints.

The results of the checks carried out in May this year show that 55% of the websites investigated showed irregularities in particular relating to: misleading information about consumer rights; misleading information about the total cost of the product; or incomplete contact details for the trader.

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General view of the press conference
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SOUNDBITE (English) by Meglena Kuneva, Member of the EC in charge of Consumer Protection: the results of our investigation were very disappointing. We found that consumers are being let (down) very badly. At this first stage, national authorities detected problems in 55% of the websites under the review.
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SOUNDBITE (English) by Meglena Kuneva: under EU rules, if you buy something on the internet, the trader must clearly inform you that you have the right for at least 7 days, longer in some countries, to change your mind, without giving any reason, send the product back and get your money back. Actually, this is the difference when you buy in a shop and when you see the item compared to when you buy online. So you have an additional privilege, a little bit assymetric on the side of the consumers, but rightly so because you are shopping online. But on many websites, customers were either not told about this right at all, or even worse were misinformed. For instance many websites indicated that the trader only accepts the product back if it is faulty, or only provides store credit but not a cash refund.
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SOUNDBITE (English) by Meglena Kuneva: so after this one, the second most common problem was misleading or incomplete information about the total cost which is a very important feature when you decide to choose to buy online. I was shocked to find that this was the case for 45% problematic websites.
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SOUNDBITE (English) by Meglena Kuneva: if you live in France and want to buy a digital camera from a Belgian website, you should be able to find clear information on the delivery rates to France before you agree to buy the camera. In many cases, however, customers could not find such information anywhere.
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SOUNDBITE (English) by Meglena Kuneva: now the enforcement phase starts. In the coming months, national enforcement authorities will contact the companies managing the websites concerned and ask them to clarify the situation or bring the sites in line with the law. We have learned from experience that even a simple contact from the national authorities often triggers very good results and traders clean up their websites. Otherwise, companies can be taken to the court or face financial penalties under national law.
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