Resumen de Thailand's Consumer Protection in Electronic Commerce: Laws and Regulations
This paper was adapted from the research funded by The Thailand Research Fund and Commission on Higher Education. It focuses on the problems and legal measures of consumer protection for electronic commerce in Thailand. The purposes of the paper were: (i) to indicate the problems that consumers usually encountered when they did online shopping [Business to Consumer (B2C) and Consumer to Consumer (C2C) types only]; (ii) to examine the existing legal measures applicable to online consumer protection in Thailand. The study revealed that consumers experienced similar problems when they did online shopping, such as delays or nondelivery, unauthorized use of payment card, non-conforming goods or services, right to cancel an order, inability to get a warranty or refund from a virtual retailer, credibility of information, trust and redress. As to legal measures, it showed that Thailand has promulgated a sui generis law dealing with electronic commerce (the Electronic Transaction Act of 2001). Nevertheless, the Act mainly just copes with the general framework of electronic transactions and contains no specific provision dealing with consumer protection. The Act only stipulates that existing consumer protection laws are applicable in cases where a problem might have occurred regarding online consumer matters. In terms of relevant existing laws, a few of these statutes enacted, such as the Consumer Protection Act of 1979, the Unfair Contract Term Act of 1997, the Direct Sales and Direct Marketing Act of 2002, the Civil and Commercial Code and the Penal Code are applicable to online shopping in some aspects. Furthermore, the Computer Related Crime Bill and the Data Protection Bill, now pending in Parliament as sui generis bills, are intended to protect online consumers in other facets. Still, it seems Thailand has adequate legal measures to handle the electronic commerce atmosphere. Nevertheless, law enforcement and jurisdiction issues are other points that we need to be concerned about in order to make legal measures more competent for consumer protection.
