What Must Be in Your Consumer Rights Policy?
Many of the startups ask me: What are the key areas that must be addressed by the Consumer Protection or the Consumer Rights Policy.
In my view, the following areas should be addressed:
In my view, the following areas should be addressed:
- Rights defined in the banking or payments regulations, such as transaction execution time, transparency of costs and fees, obligation to notify customers about changes in terms and fees in advance, etc.
- Rights related to distant sales (especially for e-commerce and marketplaces), such as the return rights, withdrawal from the distant sales transaction rights (for EU, at least), guarantees and refunds, finality of the sale, dispute resolution with the merchant.
- Rights related to potentially unfair contractual terms, especially in the area of automatic prolongation of contracts or other terms that could be potentially viewed as unfair and void.
- Rights around data protection and privacy (data information and data change requests, disclosure requirements, rights to be forgotten, where applicable).
- Complaints handling process description, including description of how a complaint is different from an inquiry, what the complaint process should be, how fast the complaint should be addressed, and what the process of escalation is, if the customer is still unhappy.
