The new bill will punish the ruble of "unscrupulous" online goods aggregators - expert comments

Rospotrebnadzor has agreed with the business a bill on the protection of customers from the unfair work of online aggregators, placing offers online retailers. Such sites will now be responsible to customers affected by deliberately inaccurate information about the product.

Rospotrebnadzor believes that in the Russian online retailer market there are "unscrupulous" stores and aggregators. They do not disclose information about the seller, manufacturer of products, about the product itself or services. They receive money into the account as intermediaries between sellers and buyers, but if problems arise, it is almost impossible to bring them to justice. In July, the ministry offered to introduce the possibility of blocking such sites and consider Internet retailers as an independent subject of responsibility.

Last year, online stores, in turn, demanded to regulate the work of commodity aggregators - sites that do not sell goods themselves, but pick up and compare offers from different online platforms on request. Approximately according to such a scheme, for example, Yandex.Market, Wikimart , “Online Mail” , Price.ru and eBay work .
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In the spring of 2014, M.Video President Alexander Tynkovan accused Yandex.Market of selling counterfeit goods and declared that the service should be responsible for violating consumer rights, RBC reminds. “Yandex” objected that it works, in fact, as an advertising platform.

If eBay or Amazon can remove a suspicious product after a complaint from the copyright holder, then Russian services offer to go to court on every occasion. In 2014, the turnover of Internet commerce in Russia grew by 31%, to 713 billion rubles, the Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Rights noted with reference to expert estimates.

In September, the Russian Association of Electronic Companies ( RAEC ) in its letter criticized the version of Rospotrebnadzor’s amendments to the law “On Protection of Consumer Rights”. The main problem with “unscrupulous” retailers, in the opinion of RAEC, is related to the work of non-domestic, but foreign online sites in Russia. Now Roskomnadzor finalized the project.

RBC describes the latest changes to the bill.

1. In favor of aggregators

The final bill takes into account the interests of the aggregators - they will not "bear the duties and responsibility of the seller", this clause was deleted. This means that if the buyer is faced with a poor-quality product, he must make a complaint to the seller, and not to the aggregator, as was assumed in the first edition of the bill.

By definition, which appeared in the bill, the aggregator is “an organization or an individual entrepreneur who provides consumers with the opportunity to familiarize themselves with information about a product (service) on their Internet site, conclude a purchase and sale agreement with the seller, and also pre-pay for goods account of such an organization. "

2. Against aggregators

Aggregators are threatened with financial losses if they post deliberately inaccurate information about a product, service or seller: it is from the aggregators that the affected buyer will have the right to demand damages.

Another responsibility that the law assigns to the aggregator will be the placement of background information about the seller or a link to the site where such information is available — the seller’s address, the full name if it concerns an individual entrepreneur, the number of registration documents, etc.

It is assumed that the new version of the amendments will come into force on January 1, 2017.

The new draft law will not be possible to apply in practice, as it contains “a lot of conditions and reservations,” the Association of Internet Trading Companies ( ACIT ) said.

According to the Executive Director of AKIT Artem Sokolov, "the current version [of the amendments] removes a significant part of the activities of aggregators from under state supervision." It is not excluded that as a result, aggregators will be allowed to limit themselves to links to sellers' sites instead of publishing detailed information about them, they are worried about ACIT.

Although the new version of the document is the lesser of the evils, the aggregators are also not fully satisfied with the innovations, according to the president of the National Association of Distance Trade ( NADT ) Alexander Ivanov. According to him, consumers may find themselves in a difficult situation: if earlier they knew for sure that they must appeal to the seller, then now they will not have such confidence.

According to him, the head of Yandex.Market, Pavel Aleshin, almost all aggregators already have customer protection programs. For example, Yandex.Market, Wikimart, and “Units Online” and their colleagues launched a website in December 2014 to receive complaints about counterfeit goods nota-claim.ru : if a product really turns out to be counterfeit, it is promised to be removed from all member sites.

The new amendments will only work if the buyer transfers the money to the aggregator’s bank account, emphasizes Denis Kosenkov, director of corporate relations and legal affairs at Wikimart. The resource can not be held responsible if it does not have compensated relations with the buyer - this will be contrary to the principles of the current legislation on consumer protection, he stressed.

The editors of "Megamind" asked the experts two questions:

1 What are the obligations to protect consumers online aggregators could actually fulfill?
2 Do you consider this requirement superfluous?

Chairman of the Internet Development Institute ( IRI ) Council, founder of LiveInternet, German Klimenko:

This is an amazing innovation Rospotrebnadzor I hope will not receive support in the State Duma. This is the same as offering business centers responsible for the activities of tenants. Of course, it would be great if the business center extinguished the debts of plundering bankers or builders, but it seems to me that such a requirement would first of all harm honest tenants, since not only the usual costs and profits of the landlord, but also the risks will be included in the rental rate .