Who protects online consumers?

Online shopping has exploded for a long time, but who will protect the victims of fraud?
Who protects online consumers?

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.