It is no secret that online trading volume is growing rapidly: last year alone, the volume increased by 38 percent. However, there are still many gaps in the relationship between the seller and the buyer, fixed by law. For example, from a legal point of view it is still unclear what marketplaces are: trading platforms or digital platforms? But the degree of responsibility towards the buyer and the rules of work depend on this.
“For a buyer, a marketplace is not an exhibition of disparate suppliers and manufacturers, but a large store. It is logical that this “hypermarket” begins to take responsibility for the goods put up for sale,” says lawyer Vladimir Chuprakov. Today, the procedure for receiving money for marriage takes too much time and nerves for buyers. To receive a refund, you must first prove the defect: take photos and videos of the product, write a statement, and sometimes send the product for examination and wait for the commission’s decision. “If the rule is approved, users will return purchases to the owner of the marketplace and demand a refund from him, because it was the marketplace that made it possible to conclude a purchase and sale agreement with the seller in relation to the goods,” Chuprakov believes and makes a comparison with traditional trade: no one returns sour milk to the factory if the purchase was made in a store.
– It is true that it is not clear how the new scheme of interaction will be implemented in practice. Who will act as an aggregator in the relationship with the buyer? Will it be the seller’s representative? Or will it be the seller himself? Who should carry out the quality check of the goods (aggregator or seller) and how will the issue of costs arising from it be resolved? So far, these questions remain unanswered,” Daria Petrova, an expert in contract law, comments on the initiative.
According to Petrova, it is very important that the document details the relations between the parties. Otherwise, the markets themselves will have to find a solution and there are reasons to argue that this decision will not benefit the buyer or supplier of the goods.
Experts are confident that the number of documents that need to be downloaded to register sellers and generate product sheets will soon increase. “It is possible that stores, in order to cover losses, including legal costs to support recourse claims against sellers, as well as to save themselves from the work of claims, will introduce requirements for sellers to provide financial guarantees in the form of liability insurance or the opening of so-called insurance deposits, to which marketplaces will have direct access,” says lawyer Oleg Matyunin. All this will inevitably lead to a change in pricing policy: “the costs of implementing new requirements will fall either on suppliers, increasing the already considerable commission, or on buyers, by including the consumable part in the cost of goods,” sums up Ilya Kirik, owner of Shopping Live.
No one returns sour milk to the factory if the purchase was made in a store
Some experts make very gloomy forecasts. “The bill creates conditions under which the model of product aggregators will become impossible, marketplaces will turn into ordinary online stores, and many sellers will lose access to the existing infrastructure, which will force them to invest in the development of their own online stores and logistics services or cease their activities,” predicts Timur Faizov, an expert from the Russian Association of Lawyers.
Help “RG”
How is an aggregator different from a marketplace? The aggregator itself does not sell products, unlike online stores. An aggregator is a virtual directory that provides links to products and services from all online stores. You cannot find detailed information about the product or place an order on the aggregator’s website.
Direct speech
Evgeniy Kovalenko, entrepreneur:
– The new requirement may negatively affect the competitiveness of Russian marketplaces compared to foreign ones. If aggregators are forced to return money to consumers in case of complaints about the quality of products, this could lead to an increase in prices on the platform or a reduction in the range of products. As a result, buyers may prefer to order on foreign marketplaces where there are no such obligations. The implementation of such a law will require additional efforts by aggregators to organize the return of goods and interact with sellers. Not all sellers are willing to take responsibility for product quality and refund consumers. This may lead to conflicts between aggregators and sellers, and also make it difficult to fulfill obligations to return money to buyers.
Alexander Labashev, methodologist at the e-commerce department of Synergy University:
– Within the next year or two, it will become increasingly difficult to import goods from other countries without carrying out full customs clearance and issuing the necessary certificates. The market will be freed from small entrepreneurs who use “grey” schemes to buy goods in order to reduce costs.
Ekaterina Avdeeva, First Vice-President of the Internet Union:
– Marketplaces have the resources to recover these losses from sellers through recourse. As a result, this approach of the regulator will become an incentive for marketplaces, through self-regulation, to strengthen controls against entrepreneurs who want to work on their platform and will begin to reject those who are unscrupulous to work with the platform. Trading platforms will begin to monitor sellers and take care of quality and absence of violations of the law. This approach will greatly reduce the burden on the courts. Since it can be expected that the recourse to the courts will be initiated by the marketplaces themselves, having exhausted all possibilities of pre-trial regulation. Now large companies are not present at all court hearings, which means that the court does not understand their position. Judges are forced to postpone the hearing at least once due to the non-appearance of the parties, and if both parties appear, the parties begin to defend their position and the resolution of the conflict is further delayed. The initiative proposed by the Ministry of Industry and Trade will encourage digital trading platforms to quickly resolve disputes with consumers.
