Illustration. Source: Internet According to the Department of E-Commerce and Digital Economy (Ministry of Industry and Trade), e-commerce has been bringing many opportunities for SMEs to boost sales and save overall transaction costs. Many violations During more than 10 years of establishment and development, the e-commerce industry has recorded rapid and continuous growth. Data from Center for Information Technology and Digital Technology, Department of E-commerce and Digital Economy, in the past 5 years, the number of businesses and individuals selling goods in the e-commerce market has been increasing. The representative of the Department of E-Commerce and Digital Economy, the Ministry of Industry and Trade also said that the strong growth of e-commerce is giving rise to many new problems, including transparency, customer rights assurance, e-commerce management. on social networks or cross-border e-commerce. Many organizations and individuals take advantage of e-commerce activities to trade prohibited goods and services, smuggled goods, counterfeit goods, infringing intellectual property rights, poor quality goods, and limited goods. business restrictions, goods trading with conditions, expired goods, goods of unknown origin, providing false information to deceive consumers … In the long term, e-commerce activities should not be managed in the “fragmented” style, adjusted for each individual platform. Because, the more we try to control specifically each type of platform, the more small and medium technology enterprises will find it difficult to enter the market. According to the Steering Committee of 389 countries, with the explosive development of e-commerce, commercial fraud activities on e-commerce floors have also increased rapidly in both size and number of cases. In recent times, many social networks and e-commerce applications are being exploited by the objects in loopholes in legal regulations and the management of the authorities to smuggle, trade fraud and trade. sales of counterfeit goods. Analyzing more closely, Mr. Phan Trong Dat – Deputy Secretary General of the Vietnam International Arbitration Center (VIAC) added, e-commerce trading floors often encounter risks when checking, monitoring and comparing information from suppliers. issuing and controlling the quality of goods (fake goods, counterfeit goods, poor quality goods) Supplier problems arise when the quantity and quality of goods cannot be controlled when it reaches consumers, claims about payment, advertising, and promotion. Consumers may face the risk of fraud, receiving poor quality goods, lack or lack of accurate information about the supplier, risks in payment, delivery … It is necessary to legislate current legal frameworks E-commerce is an inevitable trend today. However, the legal frameworks for e-commerce activities and social networking activities have been built mainly since 2013. But these regulations have not kept up with the trend of development, so far it is only a principle. are causing many difficulties in the application process. E-commerce activities in Vietnam are currently developing very quickly and it is difficult to distinguish e-commerce activities on e-commerce trading floors, e-commerce websites and on social networks because these platforms always have the improvement and addition of functions. function is similar. A research report by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) shows that the trend of using social networks as a marketing and distribution channel has been on the rise in recent years. Social networking platforms such as Facebook, tiktok, and Instagram are now all becoming e-commerce platforms, in addition, there is also a livestream mode to introduce goods directly to consumers. Using these platforms for sales, it is extremely difficult to control the quality of goods. A series of infringement detection cases, arrests of pirated goods, nearly full counterfeit goods were continuously discovered, such as a household warehouse in Ninh Binh with an average of 1,000 orders / day, or a warehouse of cosmetics and clothing in Ba Vi with an average of over 3,000 applications / day … According to the representative of the Market Control Department, the biggest difficulty in detecting and handling cases in the e-commerce environment is to have clear facts, must have buyers and have specific goods. While online transactions and payments are virtual, there are no business locations, making the information management force unable to check immediately. Not to mention, most of the transactions in this form do not have invoices and documents, so the detection and handling work is even more difficult. Therefore, in order to effectively control goods and transactions on e-commerce transactions, according to Mr. Nguyen Van Tuan – Deputy General Director of VCCorp, 5 issues need to be clarified. First, posted goods must be managed to ensure intellectual property rights. Monday, management is entitled to impersonation. Tuesday , because if not managed, the problem of price competition will arise. Wednesday was, how to handle and remove bad news, even when needed, it is possible to extract “profiles” of sellers as well as buyers – data management. Thursday, manage tax obligations for service providers on social networks. In the long term, according to Mr. Tran Dang Quang – Institute for Policy Research and Communication Development (IPS), it is not advisable to manage e-commerce activities in the “fragmented” style, adjusted for each individual platform. Because, the more we try to control specifically each type of platform, the small and medium technology businesses and startups will face a lot of difficulties if they want to enter the market. Meanwhile, large businesses with potential and experience may have many ways to respond to the stringent conditions required by law.

A friend of mine recently said, once an acquaintance called in panic calling about wrongly converting 300,000 VND into 300 million VND for an online order. My friend on the one hand just called the bank to ask for intervention, on the other hand, the owner of the sales page. While the bank said that it can only support within 24 hours, the owner of the online sales site commits to transfer the excess money immediately. Just a few minutes later, the excess money was sent back to the acquaintance’s account, the relevant bank staff also called back to report the money was transferred by the receiver. Everything happened in 15 minutes. The acquaintance sent a thank-you message to the online shopkeeper, and received a message back: “It’s not my money, if you don’t pay it, it’s a scam, but I’m not a scam”. The explosion of online businesses in the epidemic era is accompanied by disputes through this online shopping channel. It is a case of luck in many cases that cannot be recorded in the booming online shopping activity in our country. Recently, a clothing store owner said that she saw a lot of beautiful clothes on an online store, so she bought it for business with the price of 5 million dong. The homepage owner requires a full payment in advance. The clothing store owner was a bit skeptical because of that payment terms, but one factor made her reassuring: the sales page had 20,000 followers. Therefore, she still transferred 5 million before receiving the goods. A pity happened: 3-4 days passed for the shopkeeper finally received a package full of rags. She warmly said that she did not know how to get money back because everything happened online. Online shopping has mushroomed after rain in Vietnam for many years, especially since the Covid-19 epidemic. There are tons of trusted platforms out there, but there are also plenty of websites where no one knows where. The Vietnam E-Commerce Index 2020 report by the Vietnam E-commerce Association indicates that the growth rate of Vietnam’s e-commerce in 2020 will reach about 15%, reaching a scale of about 13.2 billion USD. , and is expected to continue to grow steadily in 2021 and the next period. Illustration However, the explosion of online businesses in the epidemic era is accompanied by disputes through this online shopping channel. It is recognized that fraudulent acts of online buying and selling are very diverse such as: fraudulent online purchase of goods, selling goods with the wrong quality committed, fraud through multi-level distribution channels or investment. virtual money … Mr. Pham Hoang Long, Department of Competition and Consumer Protection, Ministry of Industry and Trade, there are guests who call the department complaining that they order Iphone through online shopping channels but until when received, the Iphone has turned into a “brick” properly. Some other customers reported that they ordered fruit online, but when received, they found that the fruit was broken, not as delicious as advertised … Mr. Long said that only in 2020, the Department of Competition and Consumer Protection will receive more than 11 thousand phone calls with content of lawsuits surrounding online shopping activities. “Most online shoppers wonder whether their rights are protected by the law,” he said. In that context, Mr. Vu Anh Duong, Vice President and General Secretary of the Vietnam International Arbitration Center (VIAC), said that a unit of VIAC has built a MedUp online mediation platform to provide more a cost-effective, time-effective dispute resolution model with technology, digital application. MedUp is an online dispute resolution platform operated independently by the Vietnam Mediation Center. This is one of the few online dispute resolution platforms using ADR in Vietnam so far. With the development of MedUp, according to Mr. Duong, the Mediation Center hopes to provide a technology solution that meets and promotes the need to resolve disputes between businesses and consumers, including credit disputes. applications, disputes through e-commerce floors, … through online mediation. On that basis, he said, it will expand to become a tool to narrow the gap to justice for other offline disputes – instead of being limited to e-commerce. However, according to Mr. Duong, more support from the Ministry of Justice, business associations, industry associations, and businesses is needed to institutionalize cyber exchanges such as digital signatures or identifiers. and electronic authentication.