● More and more people are joining various "members", but the user experience is not good, such as some apps attach various restrictions to member benefits, app unauthorized adjustment of membership terms during the use of members, resulting in damage to user rights and interests, automatic renewal, and suspected false publicity
● Step by step to induce users to recharge, it is a consumer scam, and the merchant may have fraudulent behavior. According to the Consumer Rights protection law, consumers have the right to ask the merchant to make compensation, compensation for the cost of member recharge or 3 times the cost of membership
● In order to prevent the use of members by platforms or apps to infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of consumers, it is necessary to increase the cost of violating the law and increase law enforcement
□ Reporter Han Dandong
□ Wang Yitian, an intern of this newspaper
After squatting for an hour, Ms. Li from Zhoukou, Henan Province, finally chose to give up - not long ago, during the promotion of an e-commerce platform, in order to grab two coupons, as a member, she began at 9:50 a.m., and kept in front of the mobile phone screen to constantly refresh the coupons, but until 10:50, she still did not grab it.
As an old member, Ms. Li has accumulated more than 20,000 yuan in accumulated consumption on the platform, and the membership points have reached 10,000 points, but the promise of the platform "members can exchange points for coupons" has not been realized in her place so far. Ms. Li was puzzled, and after consulting customer service, she got a reply: clean up the memory of the mobile phone, or uninstall the App to download and log in again. However, according to the method provided by customer service, she still "did not play" after many trials.
"Is this move of the platform suspected of false propaganda?" Ms. Lee questioned that she believed her membership rights had been infringed.
In reality, there are not many "members" who have the same doubts. With the popularity of mobile networks, more and more apps have entered people's lives: if you want to shop, you can order cheap and discounted goods through shopping apps; if you want to chase dramas, you can just open the film and television App to watch, and you can also enjoy the ad-free model... However, these can only be achieved after opening a membership of the relevant app.
So more and more people have a variety of "member" identities, some to enjoy discounts, some to remove ads, some to chat, and some just to use an app. However, a recent interview with a reporter from The Rule of Law Daily found that the experience of many members is not good, such as some Apps attaching various restrictions to member benefits, unauthorized adjustment of membership terms during the use of members, resulting in damage to user rights and interests, automatic renewal and suspected false publicity.
Feel free to adjust the membership rules
Set up auto-renewal traps
Like Ms. Li from Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, Mr. Liang is a member of an e-commerce platform. Recently, when he was shopping on the platform, he found that his account could not collect the coupon, and the page showed that he had finished collecting it, while his friend's account could be collected at the same time. Customer service explained that "the display of the page shall prevail".
In addition to coupon issues, there will also be differences in membership prices on the above platforms. Member Ms. Zhang and her colleagues recently purchased the same mouthwash on the platform, but the price is different. After asking customer service, they learned that the time when the two people activated the membership was different, so the reference membership rules were different, and the discount was calculated differently.
The reporter checked the platform's membership rules and found that the last one is that the platform "can change or adjust the rights rules according to the actual situation of the rights and interests, and the relevant changes or adjustments will be published on the rights and interests page, and will take effect according to law after the announcement".
The reporter found that many consumers rarely understand and pay attention to the changes in the rules of membership rights, and each renewal of membership is equivalent to tacitly accepting new membership terms, but when the membership does not expire, the membership rules are often arbitrarily changed by the platform.
Ms. Wang, a resident of Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, applied for a membership card at a physical store of a fresh supermarket in November last year, and when she applied for the card, the clerk introduced that the store (located in Suzhou Chengxiang District) could deliver for Ms. Wang, who lived in the east district of Jinji Lake. But before long, the membership rules changed: the store only delivered within 5 kilometers, and Ms. Wang's home exceeded the delivery range. A month later, the membership rules changed again: the delivery quota was increased, the minimum delivery quota was increased from 299 yuan to 399 yuan, and the delivery fee was 15 yuan.
In addition to arbitrarily changing membership rules, some platforms also have the problem that automatic renewal is difficult to cancel.
Ms. Huang, a resident of Pingdingshan, Henan Province, purchased a membership of a video website at the beginning of this year, with 0 yuan in the first month and 19.9 yuan directly deducted in the next month. Later, when Ms. Huang wanted to cancel the membership, she was told by customer service that it would take 6 months to cancel, and she had to go to the offline business hall to handle it.
The experience of Mr. Wu, a resident of Liuzhou, Guangxi, is even more lamentable. He once tried a one-month membership of a shopping platform in 2018, because he did not use the platform often, and the bound bank cards were rarely used, and after a long time, Mr. Wu forgot about the membership. In February this year, he suddenly remembered the matter, a check, found that the platform without my consent, automatic renewal so far, a total of 5 years of renewal: the first year of deduction is the ordinary annual pass members 139 yuan, the second year automatically became the platform and a video website joint card 178 yuan, since then continues to this day.
Mr. Wu contacted the platform customer service to request a refund, and the other party said that the signing fee in previous years had passed the processing period, and could only refund the membership fee of the platform and a video website in 2022.
Claim that members are free to chat
In fact, it induces users to recharge
During the interview, the reporter found that many dating apps have also been criticized for membership problems, especially to induce users to recharge.
Mr. Li, a 30-year-old resident of Handan, Hebei Province, recently downloaded a dating app, and soon many "women" chatted with him, but because he did not activate the account, Mr. Li could not reply. So, he spent 39 yuan to activate the account, but just after a few words, he was reminded to "recharge members to chat.". In order to find the person he liked, Mr. Li spent another 69 yuan to recharge the member, but in the end he found that the member could only initiate 15 conversations, and he needed to continue to recharge to chat indefinitely.
After suspecting that he had been deceived, Mr. Li clicked on the dialog boxes of the "women" he was chatting with and found that everyone greeted him with the same content. Later, Mr. Li changed a mobile phone number to re-register, the previous routine appeared again, and even a "woman" had the same avatar and ID as the person who had chatted before. At this point, Mr. Li found that he may have been induced by the App to recharge.
Subsequently, the reporter downloaded a free chat app that set the gender to male. App first popped up a few women's pictures, prompt users can talk to it, there will be women take the initiative to connect the video, you can only play for free for two minutes, continue to chat need to recharge the chat coin, the home page "chat field" function recommended a lot of women's video avatars, each video avatar below are marked with 1 minute to talk about how much coin, according to the female appearance level, 1 minute 150 talk coins to 500 chat coins, the home page eye-catching position has a new person recharge special offer tips, corresponding to 18 yuan, 38 yuan and 88 yuan recharge. In the chat area, if you want to chat, you need to recharge, you need to recharge to view the visitor record, and you need to recharge if you want to continue chatting after sending more than 24 messages.
After that, the reporter downloaded another dating app to experience. The reporter signed up for the app, setting the gender to male. As soon as it is opened, there are many opposite sexes with real avatars who send out chat video invitations and take the initiative to initiate a conversation. However, the reporter found that after the reply reached a certain number of times, the system prompted the reporter that the gold coin was insufficient, to do the task or buy gold coins, and the gold coin recharge price ranged from tens of yuan to several thousand yuan. If you want to view the "Heart Problem" on the other party's homepage, you need to open a member, a monthly member of 55 yuan, a quarterly member of 138 yuan, and an annual member of 368 yuan.
In addition, the reporter's investigation also found that in order to induce users to recharge, these opposite sexes with real avatars will take the initiative to send some vulgar content of the nature of rubbing the edge ball, such as naked photos and pornographic topics.
Liu Deliang, a professor at Beijing Normal University and director of the Asia-Pacific Network Law Research Center, said that inducing users to recharge step by step is a consumer scam, and merchants may have fraudulent behavior. According to the Consumer Rights protection law, consumers have the right to ask the merchant to make compensation, compensation for the cost of member recharge or 3 times the cost of membership.
Liu Deliang said that these dating software is also suspected of violating the contract law, after the user pays the membership fee, the user and the merchant is a contractual agreement, with a legal relationship. When the consumer recharges, he finds that he has been deceived, and can go to the court to sue, claiming to revoke the contract and claim corresponding financial compensation. The market transaction part of the dating software is supervised by the market supervision department, and the content that rubs the edge ball is supervised by the Central Internet Information Office, which can refer to Article 15 of the Measures for the Administration of Internet Information: Internet information service providers shall not produce, copy, publish, or disseminate obscene pornography and other information.
Increase the cost of violating the law by merchants
Protect the basic rights and interests of members
"The membership system means that there is a contractual agreement between the consumer and the merchant, the membership rules are the corresponding system of the standard contract terms, the seller is one party, the buyer is a multi-party, and the formulation and interpretation of the terms are interpreted by the seller." Liu Deliang said.
Liu Deliang pointed out that some merchants violate the principle of good faith by restricting the rights and interests of the other party or imposing obligations on consumers to maximize the interests of merchants, which violates the principle of fairness in contract law. When formulating a standard contract, it is necessary to strictly follow the law and cannot exempt itself from its obligations. Some merchants who lack integrity use standard terms to exploit loopholes in the law and infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of consumers.
In the view of Liu Junhai, a professor at the Law School of Chinese Min University, the merchant's arbitrary change of membership rules reflects the lack of contractual spirit of the merchant, which infringes the consumer's right to know and the right to fair trade, and should bear the liability for breach of contract.
If the rights and interests of members are damaged, how can consumers protect their rights?
In this regard, Liu Junhai suggested that consumers can complain to consumer associations, or let the market supervision department report, and if the consultation fails, they can file a lawsuit with the court.
Liu Deliang believes that in order to prevent the use of members by platforms or apps to infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of consumers, it is necessary to increase the cost of violating the law and increase law enforcement.
Comics / Li Xiaojun
Source: Legal Daily
