With the strong development of information technology, e-commerce has become popular and accounts for an increasing proportion of commercial revenue in Vietnam. E-commerce relations have formed and developed strongly, reflected in transactions with the size of the e-commerce market increasing from 3 billion USD in 2015 to 12 billion USD in 2019, with the average growth rate of 38%/year. Especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, e-commerce has had a strong performance with a growth rate of 16%, and the market size reaches 14 billion USD in 2020. The inevitable problem that accompanies the development of e-commerce in Vietnam is that the number of disputes also increases along with fast and complicated trends such as: between consumers and enterprises and vice versa; among enterprises; disputes involving foreign elements, etc. The scope of the article focuses on protecting consumers when disputes arise with commercial entities on digital platforms through online dispute resolution.

Keywords: Consumer protection; Digital platform; Dispute resolution; Ecommerce.

1. Introduction

Consumer protection on digital platform is associated with the exchange procedures among parties involved in the transaction. On one hand, contracts or arrangements among parties normally can not be performed simultaneously and fully because the parties are not directly signed. Even if the contract is signed online, there is still no guarantee of consistency and consensus on the contract’s content as well as the legality of signing online. On the other hand, on this basis, regulations on providing information to consumers on digital platforms about traded goods are not clear in Vietnam's legal documents. Consumer can only rely on the information provided, especially information about the basic characteristics, the availability of the goods or services provided, or on the identity information, headquarters of operations, contact address… Therefore, when disputes arise during trading on digital platforms, legal issues related to consumer protection reveal many inadequacies that have not been covered.

A recent study by the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM, 2021)[1] showed that more than 24% of surveyed businesses ever had disputes with buyer, seller or both. The reason is that many sellers have taken advantage of the business form to commit illegal acts, causing damage to consumers. For shoppers on e-commerce platforms, the most common phenomenon is incomplete or untrue product information; invoices and transaction documents are not guaranteed; breach of responsibility for warranty, delivery, receipt, exchange and return of goods; order cancellation for no reason... In most cases that arise, the consumer is essentially accepting or if there is a complaint, only very limited results can be achieved. The reason is that the activities of social organizations participating in the protection of consumers' interests are still facing many difficulties, including policies and laws.

Another fact is that consumers' awareness of the Law on Protection of Consumer Rights is still very vague. According to a survey by the Vietnam Competition and Consumer Authority, only about 15% of consumers have read the Law on Protection of Consumer Rights. The rest do not know the Law on Protection of Consumer Rights, do not know what rights and obligations they have to protect themselves. Therefore, the complaints sent to the Association and the State's functional agencies are very few, then the infringement cases of business organizations and individuals affecting the interests of consumers are relatively common.

Especially, with online purchases on e-commerce websites, through social networks such as Facebook, Zalo... there have been many acts of infringing on consumer rights with sophisticated variations and causing greater damage than envisioned by legal institutions.

Meanwhile, some provisions in the Law on Protection of Consumer Rights are unclear or no longer relevant to the context of e-commerce and online business models. The Law on Consumer Protection was passed by the National Assembly on November 17^th, 2010. Then, on October 27^th, 2011, the Government issued Decree No. 99/2011/ND-CP guiding the implementation. Up to now, after nearly 10 years of implementation, the Law has revealed many limitations and has not yet adjusted social relations in terms of consumer rights protection arising in practice.

The problem is that there are millions of consumers participating in shopping in online shopping, most of the orders are not too big in value, for example, only 1-2 shirts, an electronic item... worth a few hundred thousand to several million dong. It should be clarified here that the current legal documents for consumer protection are mainly built on the trend of covering large groups of issues; therefore, it is always necessary to guide documents under the law and the “disparity” begins to occur when the legal documents of the parties involved are not agreed upon when cases arise. In the above example, when noticing that the quality of the product received is not commensurate with the advertisement, the first reaction of the consumer is to ask for a return or to complain if the request is not met. However, in disputes in this form, most consumers have to accept losses because they do not know which agencies or organizations to report to, and do not know where to complain. In fact, recently, even with the traditional method of buying and selling - with a relatively more complete legal system, resolving these disputes is not easy. In the Internet environment, for many reasons, solving such problems is more complicated. Even if consumer claims are received, the competent authorities are difficult to handle, creating a good precedent for both sales enterprises as well as consumers on e-commerce platforms to be aware of their rights and responsibilities.

From the above realities has led to the urgent need to develop an online dispute resolution platform enough to protect consumers, shoppers, so that it is simple, convenient, low cost and easily accessible to consumers.

2. Online dispute resolution in Vietnam

The concept of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) was known based on out-of-court dispute resolution methods used in the online or Internet environment, including negotiation, mediation and arbitration. The method is proposed to be applied because the practice of trials often requires a lot of procedures, and takes a lot of time for the parties. “ODR is a broad term that encompasses various forms of negotiation, conciliation and arbitration and court proceedings associated with the use of the Internet, websites, email, media and other information technologies as part of the dispute resolution process. The parties may not meet in person when participating in the ODR settlement process, but only need to communicate online.”[2]

Currently, in Vietnam, there are four methods of dispute resolution including negotiation, conciliation, arbitration and court. In which, negotiation, conciliation and arbitration are methods of dispute resolution outside of proceedings. The term “disputes resolution” became more familiar to Vietnam when Vietnam joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) and signed free trade agreements with content on dispute resolution.

In the period 2016-2019, Vietnam conducted studies and organized a number of seminars on the relevance of ODR. In 2020, the Prime Minister issued Decision No. 645/QD-TTg dated May 15^th, 2020 approving the National E-commerce Development Master Plan for the 2021-2025 period. In which, one solution is to research and consider applying the online dispute resolution (ODR) system, in order to strengthen the protection of consumers' interests in e-commerce, and promote the development of cross-border e-commerce, especially for small and medium enterprises. On this legal basis, Vietnamese organizations also quickly approached and put ODR into operation. The Hanoi International Arbitration Center has launched the Online Dispute Resolution System since June 2020. The Vietnam International Arbitration Center launched its online commercial mediation platform (Medup) at the end of March 2021.

The ODR system has the advantages of being economically feasible, efficient, fast, and flexible; create asynchronous, non-confrontational interactions; allowing for more communication, more convenience and better neutral access and unlimited territory. At the same time, this system makes it easier to store records, data, manage and search documents. However, the disadvantages of ODR require computer skills, language barriers and lack of clear legal standards.

This method of solving ODR through digital platforms is a very new method in Vietnam, but not new in the world. The ODR platform brings a lot of benefits to both businesses and consumers, because through this platform businesses and consumers are connected with each other and can settle through an agreement method. In addition to resolving disputes at that time between businesses and consumers, it can bring a lot of experience to businesses in developing their products and services in the future. As for consumers, through this dispute resolution, they know where to target when they encounter disputes, dissatisfaction in their online purchases. This will be a driving trend in the coming time for both ASEAN and Vietnam to have initiatives and activities to build the platform and build the ODR mechanism related to the online platform.

Along with the development of e-commerce, the number of disputes arising tends to increase in Vietnam, the ODR system is considered an effective solution to this problem, because it saves a lot of time and costs for businesses, while protecting the rights of consumers. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on perfecting the conditions for ODR dissemination and more effective application of ODR in both e-commerce and traditional commercial activities.

3. Some issues when applying ODR

The resolution of e-commerce disputes through ODR has many advantages compared to traditional methods. However, the application of ODR in Vietnam raises a number of issues that need special attention:

Firstly, legal basis

As mentioned above, although there is a system of legal documents on consumer protection and e-commerce, the actual developments in recent years show a “gap” in regulations governing directly online dispute resolution. This causes difficulties in applying the law to e-commerce dispute resolution.

Up to this point, the legal basis for online dispute resolution is the Law on Electronic Transactions 2005 and Decree No. 52/2013 on e-commerce. However, as mentioned above, these regulations are general principles and are difficult to apply directly to ODR. The Code of Civil Procedure 2015 also does not have separate regulations on the order, procedures and competence to settle disputes for e-commerce.

Decree No. 22/2017/ND-CP on commercial mediation is one of the legal documents that regulates the content of online commercial mediation, initially facilitating the formation of online dispute resolution. However, the content such as: the scope of the dispute is used ODR method; order, procedures and legal value of dispute settlement decisions... have not been specified and there are no guidelines, so the cases of disputes cannot be handled.

In fact, the online adjudication method still faces difficulties in establishing infrastructure and ensuring connectivity. The parties involved are more or less restricted in presenting their arguments and opinions as well as their ability to interact with each other during the trial. Therefore, there are still many different opinions about the effectiveness of online trial. Although the benefits of online trial are quite obvious such as saving costs and travel time, the online trial does not seem to be able to replace the traditional trial.

Because there is no regulation on a common mechanism to resolve e-commerce disputes and protect consumers by ODR method, when a dispute occurs, the seller - or in other words an e-commerce service provider will “take the reins” in the dispute resolution process. From there, the interests of consumers will be narrowed down as a “private matter” to the e-commerce service provider.

Secondly, the problem of technology infrastructure

After the legal field, technical and technological issues will determine the success of ODR. However, the reality in Vietnam shows that in the Internet and e-commerce environment, there are many problems that need to be solved, especially in terms of law violations, trading in fake and imitation goods on e-commerce websites/apps. Therefore, it is necessary to move towards a connection between the technology infrastructure of the State management agencies to agree on the identification of mistakes of e-commerce service platforms in order to protect consumers effectively.

Currently, the Ministry of Industry and Trade also has a portal for consumers to report complaints, but in terms of interaction and convenience with consumers, it is still quite limited. Therefore, it is necessary to have an online dispute complaint management and resolution system built on the basis of connecting and sharing databases between units such as Vietnam E-commerce & Digital Economy Agency, Vietnam Competition and Consumer Authority, Vietnam Directorate of Market Surveillance, Departments of Industry and Trade of provinces and cities... In particular, this management system has the participation and commitment of dozens of e-commerce floors and retail chains for the products for sale. This management system will receive information about reports of counterfeit, fake and poor quality goods and send all these feedbacks of consumers to the competent authorities. Competent authorities will promptly prevent and resolve related disputes, creating good legal precedents - giving consumers confidence.

Thirdly, the readiness of the business to get involved

The survey shows that the percentage of Vietnamese enterprises willing to apply the ODR form is still very low. As mentioned above, most businesses just want to settle disputes in a "private matter" with consumer complaints; not to mention the number of businesses that actually have the conditions to apply ODR form is not much, because there is not enough ICT (Information and Communication Technology) technical team to support and implement ODR. Therefore, the enterprises themselves, not only small and medium enterprises but also large enterprises, do not want to put themselves in a risky position, which is to resolve disputes with customers in an open and transparent manner.

REFERENCES

1. ABA (2002), American Bar Association Task Force on E-Commerce and ADR -Addressing Disputes in Electronic Commerce, Final Report and Recommendation.
2. Government (2017), Decree No. 22/2017/ND-CP on commercial mediation.
3. Government (2011), Decree No. 99/2011/ND-CP guiding the implementation of the Law on Protection of Consumer Rights.
4. National Assembly (2010), Law on Consumer Protection was approved by the National Assembly on November 17^th, 2010 and took effect from July 1^st, 2011.
5. Prime Minister (2020), Decision No. 645/QD-TTg dated May 15^th, 2020 approving the National E-commerce Development Master Plan for the 2021-2025 period.
6. Central Institute for Economic Management and Vietnam International Arbitration Center (2021), Project "Promoting online dispute resolution in E-commerce to protect consumers", Hanoi.

[1] The project "Promoting online dispute resolution in e-commerce to protect consumers" is co-ordinated by the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM) and the Vietnam International Arbitration Center (VIAC), 2021.

[2] American Bar Association (ABA, 2002)