Two consumer rights groups in China said that the country’s online shopping sector was the biggest target of consumer complaints in the service industry in 2013. It has been stated by the China Consumers’ Association that online shopping, mobile telecommunications and Internet access were the ones to receive almost half of all the consumer complaints in the sector in 2013.
The China National Institute of Standardization said on May 7, 2014 that increasing competition in the industry has not managed to yield improvements when it comes to service standards. A professor of consumer rights law in China, Wu Jingming said, “The high number of consumer complaints is in line with the country’s fast-developing e-commerce market, which is the world’s largest in terms of the number of participants”.
The professor went on to explain that the online shopping industry was created on the framework of industry self-regulation. Moreover, the industry did not have any guidelines and regulations from the country’s authorities. It has been reported that approximately 20 percent of consumers did not manage to protect their rights under a new law which provides them seven days to return goods in order to get refunds.
Wu went on to say that the country is in need of a law which is exclusively created for the e-commerce industry. In 2013, the number of complaints received in the health, medical, clothing and beauty industry has tripled.
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