How Should Consumers Protect The Rights Of Consumers?

The original intention is to cross the border of regressive taxation.

But it has evolved into a key proposition that has little to do with taxation itself.

If importing B2C (business to consumer)

The sale of goods will be completely "sunny" and imported by general trade. Most of the cosmetics, food and health products that have not been applied or registered in China can not enter the bonded area.

The logic behind this is that from the perspective of the food and drug administration, the General Administration of quality supervision and quarantine, the inspection and quarantine departments of various places, if these commodities are not supervised by traditional strict methods, who should bear the responsibility if there are major problems in the future?

This has also opened up the question that has never hidden since the birth of "gray sea Tao": if consumers purchase unqualified or even counterfeit products through cross-border e-commerce platform, how should they protect their rights?

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This problem has become a worldwide problem in many fields and across borders.

Testing the standard of powdered milk: the child is "not sick".

The reporter interviewed more than 20 sea novice parents, everyone has a fake "driven to the top" bitter tears.

Xiao Qian (a pseudonym) is a white-collar worker in a high-tech company in Shanghai. Around 2012, he was ready to have children. Under the influence of people around him, he formally launched his own upgrading course.

In this process, she never thought that if we buy unqualified products, we can return the goods normally.

From the beginning of pregnancy, she joined a large group of sea washes. Most of them were new mothers and fathers who were waiting for their mothers or children before the age of 3.

In order to enable the future baby to use reassuring mother and baby products, she began to search all kinds of information diligently, and explored the mothers in Hai Tao Group at any time, and gradually developed a "real skill".

"What worries me most is buying fake products.

"Xiao Qian told reporters that the product she first considered was the baby formula that was constantly scandalous at that time.

She compared it to 800 grams, and A2's cattle pen and Ai Mei were over 400 yuan / cans in the local supermarket.

But high prices are not reassuring.

Because some people found that some milk powder is genuine milk powder filling fake milk powder, can not distinguish between true and false.

Xiao Qian fed breastmilk for nearly a year, bought a friend for half a year, and bought a domestic cross-border electricity supplier with internal acquaintances for half a year.

At other times, direct mail is also purchased directly from overseas websites such as Amazon.

In the course of her children's growth, she constantly tries to buy different brands of goods from different sources and different channels to minimize this risk.

"I changed a lot of origin and brand, the standard formula in Europe, the United States and China is different, but the final test is that if the child does not get sick and everything is normal, it is good milk powder."

She taught her newspaper reporters the experience, "we should learn to study information, such as the last accident of the fake beauty, the real name is beauty, Jia Er, the problem is called beauty lil."

In addition, Xiao Qian found out from various forums and friends that although some goods are sent out from abroad, they are actually fake filling abroad. What is more, they are sent directly from one place to another, even if they are imported milk powder.

The difficult process of Hai Tao made her have no time to consider the issue of safeguarding rights, and only wanted to receive the goods successfully.

First is the shortage of goods.

Overseas websites will also limit the number of purchases, and no matter whether Hai Tao or cross-border electricity providers, they often lose their products.

She did not dare to buy too much at one time. "In recent years, customs inspection has become stricter, and I have almost been checked every time I pass the overseas company."

In addition to powdered milk, she and many newcomers and parents also have many domestic and overseas maternal and infant products, such as health products, baby medicines and skin care products.

With the gradual rise of China's B2C cross-border electricity supplier, Xiao Qian has begun to buy products through faster delivery platforms, but all kinds of fake rumors can not completely reassured her.

She asked for advice everywhere, only using a friend's guarantee platform.

Nevertheless, in the case of quality problems, only one of the new parents who interviewed the newspaper reporter had thought about the complaint.

She told our reporter Tucao, a brand of baby diaper bought from a big business platform, and the size of the version she brought from the Japanese meat was different, it was also easy to tear, and it was doubtful that it was unqualified.

Because they were usually helped by the elderly at home, they were discovered almost half of them.

It is not useful to reflect to the customer service.

At last, it was too busy to know.

More than three international trade insiders briefed our reporter that imports of counterfeit goods are a systemic problem in China.

In the traditional B2B import process, there are some brands of general agents, such as formula milk agents, may distribute the products in the process, in the real milk powder mixed with low quality, but can also eat fake milk powder, sold to dealers.

"China's manufacturing capability is too strong."

One person who knows the inside story said, "if the product is not a direct supplier, it is very easy to get into trouble by acting at all levels."

In fact, among the Chinese consumers who have been forced to go to Shanghai's Amoy Road, a very significant and largest group is the middle-class parents who are "zero tolerance" for mother and infant fake products.

The high degree of standardization that consumers need and pay attention to is very easy to import through overseas, enter the cross-border electricity supplier bonded warehouse, and then mail out the customs' mother and baby products.

Customs related personages have told our reporter that this kind of people's livelihood products (maternal and child products, health products, cosmetics) with high consumer demand and high standard of standardization are the direction of initial pilot cross border business incentives.

Reporters have previously reported that food, drugs, health products, milk powder, cosmetics, these categories, is a large consumer demand in China, high degree of product standardization, easy to collect goods into the domestic bonded warehouse goods, but also the domestic "sunshine" B2C cross-border e-commerce inventory largest category.

Instead of the standard category of personalized products, such as leather bags, clothes, shoes and so on, regular businesses prefer to send direct mail from overseas warehouses.

The basic idea of designing this system initially is that these consumers, through products imported from cross-border electricity suppliers, all acquiescence to individual consumer goods purchased overseas.

But unlike Hai Tao or purchasing, most products can enjoy "no reason to return goods within seven days" through platform purchase, or solve the after-sale problem through complaints.

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An electricity supplier provided a set of customs related data to our reporter. In 2015, the total scale of cross-border import bonded was 17 billion 600 million yuan.

According to incomplete statistics, the scale of Hai Tao was 300 billion yuan last year and 1 trillion and 500 billion yuan for outbound tourism.

Wang Haobai, an associate professor of the City College of Zhejiang University, estimated that the B2C import of the whole industry was 1 trillion yuan by customs data. Considering the policy change factors, it will increase to 12000 billion yuan in the next five years.

Such a huge market, how to regulate and protect consumers, so as to avoid the occurrence of high-risk events such as group food safety is an important issue that decision makers need to take into account.

Outside the box

With cross-border electricity providers sweeping the globe, how consumers protect their rights in the new era has also become a global problem.

In the traditional general trade situation, if the product is out of order, the consumer can find the dealer directly. If the whole batch of goods is out of order, the brand will also activate the recall.

But online cross-border platforms are much more complicated.

"If I buy unqualified / fake goods on cross-border electricity suppliers, how should government regulators, e-commerce platforms and overseas suppliers divide responsibilities?"

Behind this seemingly simple question, there are complex connotations.

Yu Ying, director of the China consumer rights program at University of Oxford, told reporters that the problem has spanned many areas, including e-commerce platform, consumer dispute resolution and private international law.

Because the legal systems of different countries are different, the international organizations and the conventions they perform are inconsistent, so there is no fixed answer.

For example, Chinese consumers have disputes over the purchase of goods from EU businesses. First, we must decide which country laws are applicable in China and the EU, and which countries should be involved if there is a judgement.

Faced with the choice of execution.

For example, the Chinese law stipulates that the platform is not liable, but the law of the EU stipulates that the platform needs to be held responsible.

Therefore, it is very complicated.

Some import cross border electricity providers responsible for this reporter said that some of the current measures, through the market way to solve consumer demand.

For example, if a consumer complains of a businessman and confirms the fact, the e-commerce platform can directly request the merchant commodity or even the brand to get off the shelves, which is very deterrent.

Many platforms have issued clear consumer protection regulations and guidelines.

But Yu Ying found in field research that the situation is not so simple.

Many problems can not be solved by the platform, for example, many businessmen take a shot to change a place, use multiple ID cards to register accounts, take off the shelves once, and then resurrect with other identities.

At present, such a loophole is hard to fill because the government has not authorized the identification of ID card information.

"Many consumers blindly trust imported products to be safer, but the actual situation is not necessarily so, mainly because the credibility of domestic products is not enough."

She said.

From the practical level, Ying Ying suggested that, in accordance with the practice of the United States, in the people's livelihood products related to personal safety, similar to the compulsory insurance system in China's domestic car purchase, manufacturers and dealers should be forced to purchase product liability insurance.

In her view, in any country, relatively mature large enterprises, individual consumers are the weak side.

According to the materials published by the European Union of justice, consumer and gender equality, about 1/5 of the EU's residents experience problems in the consumption process each year, of which only 2% of consumers use lawsuits to settle disputes, resulting in a consumer loss equivalent to 0.4% of the GDP of the whole European Union. The loss caused by cross-border pactions is estimated to be between 500 million and 1 billion euros.

In this regard, the EU has devoted funds to establish an online dispute settlement platform [TheOnlineDisputeResolution (ODR) platform] to help consumers solve cross-border rights protection problems at a lower cost.

The European Parliament and the European Commission adopted the consumer ADR directive and the consumer ODR Ordinance in May 2013.

On the basis of the two legislation, the EU invested 4 billion 586 million euros in financial support and related human support to establish a pan European Union ODR platform, which was officially launched in early 2016.

The EU expects that the EU's long distance consumer market will expand by 190 billion euros if barriers to cross-border consumption can be ruled out.

Yu Ying believes that another problem to be solved in China is that the consumer protection organizations in China are semi official organizations, both raising funds and permissions.

"China Consumer Association is the only organization in the world that does not absorb ordinary consumers as a member."

Xu Mingyan served as a joint legal expert on anti monopoly and consumer protection in China World Trade Center development organization.

She told reporters that as the subject of consumer empowerment, the official and semi official nature of the consumer protection organization system in China restricts the function, and the voluntary consortium usually performs better than the state administrative power.

It is necessary to actively encourage and promote the social pformation of consumer organizations to market rules more quickly.