THE Shenzhen Consumer Council reminded online shoppers yesterday to be aware of bogus disclaimers used by sellers to dodge responsibilities.

It listed five disclaimers that are often seen on shopping Web sites in China, but which are invalid according to China's Contract Law. Among these was the claim: "In the event that our products are not exactly the same as their description, the only thing you can do is to return us the unused items."

But when products and their descriptions do not match, consumers may suffer an injury or a loss after using the products, according to the consumer council. Under such circumstances, buyers can neither return the products, nor ask for refunds, Chen Shaowen, head of the council, told a press conference yesterday.

"Sellers are obviously trying to dodge their responsibilities in terms of refunds, and Article 40 of China's Contract Law says: 'When the party that supplies the standard terms exempts itself from its liabilities, increases the liabilities of the other party, and deprives the material rights of the other party, the terms shall be invalid,'" Chen said.

Other invalid clauses included: "This Web site reserves the rights to change or stop services at any time and not to inform the users, or not to be liable to users or the third party," and, "Users should be liable for any activities undertaken under their user names."

Online shoppers should pay attention to such invalid disclaimers, as this could help avoid potential disputes, and sellers should stopping dodging their responsibilities and offer satisfactory services if they wish to boost their business, the consumer council said.

A series of activities will be organized to mark World Consumer Rights Day on Monday and to offer online shoppers guidance following a surge in Internet shopping and related complaints.

Figures showed that the consumer council received 416 Internet-related complaints in 2009, making up 5.6 percent of complaints received for the year. Among these were 141 complaints related to online shopping. Problems generally involved poor product quality and misleading claims about products.

Online shopping is a booming industry in China. There were 384 million netizens in the country by the end of 2009, an increase of 80 million over 2008, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced this year.

While online trade volume surged to 250 billion yuan (US$37 billion) in 2009, the number of Internet shoppers had also climbed to 100 million, indicating there was at least one buyer among every 13 Chinese, according to iResearch, a market research agency.

This trend has helped Shanghai-based online shopping platform Taobao to achieve sales of 100 billion yuan in just five and a half years. Gome, a retail giant, spent 20 years to achieve the same figure.

Source:Shenzhen Daily