In February, the European Commission launched a new online platform enabling traders and consumers to resolve disputes relating to goods purchased over the internet, either in this country or abroad.
The Platform is a single contact point which enables both consumers and traders to resolve their disputes relating to purchases made over the internet; the actual dispute is resolved by national ADR entities selected by the individual Member States. These comprise more than one hundred different entities, while in the Czech Republic these entities connect the financial arbitrator, the Czech Bar Association, the Czech Trade Inspection Authority and the Czech Telecommunication Office to the platform.
The parties to the dispute must agree on which entity is to resolve the dispute, otherwise it will not be resolved via the platform. Therefore, if one party does not agree to an alternative means of resolving the dispute, that solution will not be possible.
The platform can be used in all states of the European Union with the exception of Croatia, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania and Spain, in which no ADR entity is yet connected to the platform. Disputes between consumers and traders in those countries cannot yet be resolved via the platform, although the Commission has appealed to the Member States to connect the relevant entities to the platform. It may therefore be supposed that in future it will be possible to use the platform in all EU Member States.
The aim of the platform is to reduce the costs and time involved in resolving disputes, increase consumer confidence when shopping on-line and support entrepreneurs in selling their goods abroad.
The platform is to achieve these objectives particularly in the following manner:
• The platform is easy to use and accessible from all types of devices. The form can be completed in three easy steps
• The entire dispute may be resolved online; there is no need to send any correspondence or attend hearings before the relevant authority
• The platform is multilingual, and also includes a translation service. This means that disputes can be resolved in claimants’ native language
• The average time taken to resolve a dispute is 90 days, which is considerably shorter than with court proceedings
The platform offers the chance to agree on an alternative means of resolving disputes that exist in addition to court proceedings, although court proceedings generally take far longer and are much more expensive. Statistics show that only 45 % of consumers are satisfied with the outcome of court proceedings while the figure is 70 % with alternative methods.
The platform is therefore a suitable means of resolving particularly cross-border disputes when buying and selling goods on-line, which the time, administrative and monetary costs of a judicial dispute often exceed the actual value of the dispute, and so these disputes are generally never resolved.
The entire dispute resolution process takes place online, in the following four steps:
1. Filing the complaint
The consumer or entrepreneur completes and submits the online form on the platform website.
2. Agreement on the entity to resolve the dispute
The parties to the dispute agree which ADR entity connected to the platform will decide on the dispute. If the parties do not agree within 30 days of filing the complaint, the complaint will not be heard.
3. The complaint is heard by the dispute arbiter
The dispute arbiter has three weeks to decide whether it is competent to resolve the dispute and to then send that decision to the parties.
4. Resolving and concluding the complaint
The arbiter resolves the dispute online based on the information and documents provided by the parties. The dispute is generally resolved within ninety days.
The platform can be found at the following link:
https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/odr/main/index.cfm?event=main.home.show&lng=CS
For more information, please contact our office’s partner, Mgr. Jiří Kučera, e-mail: jkucera@kuceralegal.cz ; tel.: +420604242241.