Consumer law in england and wales Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Consumer law in england and wales - Article ExampleAccordingly, in this paper I shall adopt a focused approach and particularly consider the e-commerce goaded consumer measures and their concomitant impact on consumer law in England and Wales.The rapid pace of online business activity has fuelled piecemeal responsive legislative measures in an attempt to remnant the interests and protection of consumers whilst simultaneously facilitating market growth. It is submitted at the outset, that ad hoc responsive EU legislative measures have been insufficient to cover the multifarious consumer transactions covered by the e-commerce umbrella. Moreover, the underlying weakness in such measures has been the fact that effective online business is clearly dependent on effective consumer protection as opposed to macrocosm mutually exclusive.If we consider this contextually, within England and Wales the primary issue impacting consumer protection under the e-commerce paradigm has been effective c onsumer protection vis--vis optimum market facilitation. ... Additionally, in order to commercially exploit the new e-commerce business model, the key to growing a successful online business is to ensure compliance with legal requirements regarding the selling of goods and services to consumers, work with true internet service providers and programmers and utilise effective marketing tools to promote business (Alexiou, 2002). As such, the central consumer protection legal issues raised by this are as follows 1) The use of online wrong and conditions - Standard commercial agreements need to consider the protection against unfair commercial practices and unfair contract terms (Singleton, 2003). Moreover, consumer contracting on online terms and conditions raises jurisdiction and relevant law issues and2) Data protection compliance needs to be addressed both in respect of collecting information on online users, selling customer lists and monitoring e-mail and viral marketing. Busine sses must be registered with the Information Commissioner for processing and implement an online privacy policy and marketing and detailed congenital policies on employee monitoring (Smith, 2001). Furthermore, the e-commerce business model involves the provision of goods and services online in the course of business to consumers at a distance and as such, raises issues as to applicable law and enforceability, which is further compounded by borderless frontiers in enforcement (Smith, 2001). The global nature of transacting online has fuelled a number of international e-commerce initiatives (Lloyd 2004). However, the rhetoric of these proposed models focus solely on the restrictive aspect of e-commerce, which is arguably one element of wider issues raised by e-commerce from a