The Consumers’ Foundation yesterday said that 11 out of 14 major online shopping Web sites violated consumer protection regulations by not giving refunds or making exchanges for certain products.
Many online shopping Web sites indicate that for certain products, such as underwear, gardening products, food and beverages, CDs and DVDs, refunds and exchanges are not possible. However, the consumer rights watchdog yesterday said that such terms violated Article 19 of the Consumer Protection Act (消費者保護法), which extends to products sold via mail-order, direct sales and other special shopping channels regardless of product type and urged authorities to investigate the matter and enforce the law.
Foundation chairman Hsieh Tien-jen (謝天仁) said that 11 of the 14 major online shopping networks surveyed by the foundation listed terms and conditions that were unfair to customers because though the shopping sites are categorized as mail-order or special sales channels, they do not give consumers the minimum seven-day grace period for customers to return the product if they are not satisfied, as the act mandates.
“Online shopping sites exclude these products from refunds and exchanges because of concerns such as copyrights infringement, personal hygiene or expiration dates,” Hsieh said. “However, businesses should have taken these costs and risks into account by reflecting the costs in the product pricing, or just not offer these items for sale on the Web site.”
Some online shopping networks also indicate that refunds and exchanges are not accepted once customers open the product packaging. The foundation said this also violated the law. As customers cannot touch or examine products obtained via mail order, Web sites and TV networks, to determine whether they are satisfied with the product, the packaging must be opened, Hsieh said. By not accepting returns on opened products, businesses have taken away customers’ right to determine whether there are any problems with the product, he said.
The foundation said the companies’ return policies were unreasonable and that such a violation of consumer rights was unacceptable. The group urged the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Industrial Development Bureau, which oversees online shopping businesses, to be more diligent in protecting the rights of consumers.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching