Sweep reveals improvements in websites' consumer protection compliance

The previous 'sweep' of e-commerce sites selling digital games, books, videos and music, carried out by national regulators, found that 172 of the 330 websites assessed were non-compliant with some consumer protection rules. However, a follow-up sweep has now found that 116 of the 172 websites have made changes to comply with the legal requirements. The European Commission said that 49 of the websites were, though, "subject to further proceedings".

"Enforcement of consumer rights is a priority for me including in the rapidly changing digital environment," Neven Mimica, the European Commissioner for Consumer Policy, said. "I am pleased that this sweep addressed some of the most important issues related to digital content downloads. A year ago over 50% of the websites were not compliant, which is unacceptable. This figure is now down to 20%, and further results are expected. This is great progress but I will continue to fight for improvements."

Where problems were discovered with some of the websites they mainly concerned the existence of unfair contract terms, unclear information about cancellation rights or a lack of displayed contact information for the trader, the Commission said.

"The main discovered problems were: unfair contract terms excluding the consumers' right to take legal action or denying consumers a right to compensation in cases where the products failed to work; unclear information with regard to the right of withdrawal: due to the nature of digital downloads, traders are required to inform consumers prior to the purchase that they will not be able to cancel a download once this has started – this was however not the case for 42% of websites checked; [and] a lack of mandatory information on the trader's identity, in particular their email address, depriving consumers from an effective contact channel," the Commission said.

A separate study also found that websites often failed to display any or sufficient details about geographical restrictions that could apply to transactions, whilst it also found that some sites advertising games as being available for free in fact required some form of payment "at a later stage".

"Such practices often target directly children, the most vulnerable of consumer groups, and have led to situations in which parents have run up huge bills by allowing their children to play on their mobile devices," the Commission said.