A consumer advocacy group called on the government to provide better protection for people buying products sold on Facebook, citing a spate of fraudulent transactions involving companies that advertise on the platform.
The government does not require Facebook sellers marketing to Taiwanese to register their identities or other relevant information, which makes consumers vulnerable to fraudulent activities, the group’s administrator Hsu Pei-luan (許佩鑾) said.
The government keeps trying to stop fraud through public information campaigns when it should be focusing on taking legislative action, Hsu said.
Consumers used to be denied access to information about sellers, because delivery service providers feared violating the Personal Information Protection Act (個人資料保護法) and were not legally required to register sender information, Hsu added.
The situation improved after Minister Without Portfolio Audrey Tang (唐鳳) convened government hearings with fraud victims, which resulted in regulatory changes, she said.
Hsu created the group along with other victims of false advertising on social media after she had purchased an insecticide product through a Facebook ad, she said.
Although the advertisement was written in Japanese, she discovered after receiving the product that the packaging and user’s manual were in simplified Chinese, she said, adding that three components of the product were missing.
Her messages to the merchant went unanswered and she repeatedly called the sender over three days, only to find that the sender was a customs clearance agency, she said.
Hsu said that she was only able to recover a portion of her purchase amount.
The advocacy group uses infographics and flowcharts to help people recover their money, she said.
The group has more than 10,000 members and has helped many people, including a group of high-school students who were able to recover more than NT$10,000 after a large-volume purchase of shoes turned out to be subpar, Hsu said.
Another fraud victim contacted the police after exhausting other options, but was accused of making false accusations, she said.
“Although the prosecutor ultimately dropped the case, the process caused the victim further distress and loss,” she added.
“Many victims of fraud instinctively call the police,” Hsu said. “However, the typical police response is to label it a ‘consumer dispute,’ and to refer the victim to the Consumer Protection Committee, where an official usually says there are no laws that regulate trade outside of Taiwanese jurisdiction.”
Consumer demands for Facebook to shut down pages that advertise fraudulent products are often rejected, with the social media company saying that the content does not violate community guidelines, which only cover violent or sexually explicit material, she said.
The Committee’s recommendation to check products before signing and paying for them is not helpful because delivery personnel usually reject such requests, “because consumers have no such right under the law,” she said.
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