Consumers’ contentious

Whenever a consumer claim is rejected by the trader and the consumer decides to go on further with is request of redress, the claim becomes a dispute. There are two main ways to manage it: court and out of court justice. Out of court justice means alternative procedures like conciliation and arbitration. The judicial way is probably the one giving more guarantees of full acceptance of  the consumer’s requests (if he is really asking something which is a right recognised by law), but in most cases it is not cost-effective, not only from the economic point of view, for consumer disputes. Actually, in case of court procedure to get redress from the trader, the consumer has to face relevant expenses (namely in case of cross-border disputes), has to wait for a long time before the sentence is issued (many years if it is necessary to apply 2^nd and 3^rd degree judgement) and his life may be affected by the judgement being pending. Furthermore, if the trader is abroad, the consumer needs particularly qualified legal advice and a lawyer being able to act at international level, with law and procedure differences to take into consideration, language difficulties and travel expenses to face. This is why most consumers renounce exercising their rights when the claim becomes a cross-border dispute.

Advantages for consumers

The reason why Alternative Dispute Resolution is convenient and really more suitable than a judgement in consumer cases is that:

- trader and consumer can find a friendly settlement together, with the support of a qualified third party, expert in consumer law and, whenever needed, in technical matters dealing with the object of the dispute: so the relationship between them can be preserved

- it involves time and money saving: the procedure is much shorter, very cheap and accessible without the legal assistance of a lawyer

- it is easy and less exhausting than a judgement

- it is particularly suitable for cross-border disputes, through online procedures

Anyway, it is necessary to check the availability of ADR schemes for each single case, depending on the place where the trader is located, on the subject of the dispute, on the amount of money involved by the consumer’s request and other parameters.

The ECC-Net support to have access to the ADR procedures

One of the main objectives of the ECC-Net is to support consumers in the access to ADR procedures to solve their disputes. The Network groups 26 centres all over Europe where experts in consumer law are available to evaluate consumer cases and to assist in the complaint lodging. The trader and the consumer ECC collaborate to find out the applicable law, to estimate the correct request for redress and to help the consumer keeping in touch with the trader. If the claim is rejected, the ECC-Net supports the consumer accessing the appropriate ADR scheme, if available, by providing information about the procedure, including time and costs. Once the dispute has been addressed to the ADR, the ECC Net assists in its monitoring, in order to constantly keep the consumer informed on its development and on its final outcome. The ECC assistance is free of charge.