The China Consumers Association evaluation report shows that consumer rights protection is still a shortcoming expert call
Broaden rights protection channels through multiple levels and multiple forms
● To improve the quality of the consumer environment, it is necessary to establish a full-cycle governance awareness from the perspective of serving consumers and protecting consumers.
Focus on protecting consumer rights and interests, improve service levels, ensure the truthfulness of information, ensure fair prices, ensure transaction security, and strengthen after-sales protection
● To improve consumption supply, it is necessary to accurately grasp the consumption demand, analyze and respond to the consumption ability and demand characteristics of different consumer groups, and accurately grasp the consumption characteristics and consumption trends at different stages
● The low efficiency of the current complaint mechanism and dispute resolution mechanism is a prominent problem that restricts consumer rights protection.
It is necessary to establish a sound consumer rights protection supervision mechanism, unblock complaint channels, and ensure rapid response and rapid resolution. Those who do not accept complaints in a timely manner or prevaricate, or do not handle them in time after accepting complaints, shall be supervised and held accountable
□ Our reporter Hou Jianbin
On March 13, the China Consumers Association released the "2020 Consumer Satisfaction Evaluation Report in 100 Cities" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") in Beijing.
The "Report" shows that in 2020, the comprehensive score of consumer satisfaction in 100 cities across the country is 79.32 points, which is generally at a good level.
According to reports, the 2020 consumer satisfaction evaluation index system consists of 3 first-level indicators, 16 second-level indicators, and 25 third-level indicators. The 100 cities evaluated mainly include municipalities directly under the central government, provincial capital cities, cities under separate planning, and some social consumer goods. Cities with higher total retail sales.
The "Report" shows that the overall level of urban consumer satisfaction in 2020 is good, and the results of consumer satisfaction evaluation have steadily improved for three consecutive years.
The scores of "consumption supply" and "consumption environment" exceeded 80 points for the first time. "Consumption rights protection" is still the main shortcoming in the evaluation of consumer satisfaction, but the scores have improved. Consumer law enforcement, consumer publicity, transaction security and rights and interests Maintenance has become the main task that consumers expect to strengthen.
In an interview with a reporter from the Rule of Law Daily, many experts said that it is not easy for consumers to achieve such results due to the uncertainty of the international and domestic consumer environment and the impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic.
Experts also called for the establishment of a full-cycle governance awareness from the perspective of serving consumers and protecting consumers, focusing on protecting consumers' rights and interests, improving service levels, ensuring the truthfulness of information, ensuring fair prices, ensuring transaction security, and strengthening after-sales protection.
In addition, it is necessary to further broaden the rights protection channels, build a multi-level channel covering from operators, industry associations, relevant departments, and rights protection agencies, and provide multiple forms of rights protection channels such as telephone, network, and window horizontally.
Satisfaction of the consumer environment has improved
Actively guide the upgrading of consumption structure
The "Report" shows that under the 100-point system, the comprehensive score of consumer satisfaction in 100 cities in 2020 is 79.32 points, which is generally a good level.
Compared with 71.75 points in 2017, 73.68 points in 2018, and 77.02 points in 2019, the scores of consumer satisfaction evaluation in 2020 show a continuous upward trend.
The highest overall score of consumer satisfaction in 100 cities was 86.67 points (Hangzhou City), and the lowest was 69.48 points (Guiyang City). The difference between the highest score and the lowest score was 17.19 points.
51 cities scored higher than the national comprehensive score this year, accounting for 51%.
The bottom 10 cities in the evaluation score are: Changchun City (73.67 points), Tangshan City (73.54 points), Songyuan City (73.36 points), Shantou City (73.22 points), Hefei City (73.13 points), Zunyi City (72.21 points) Points), Handan City (71.12 points), Hengyang City (70.61 points), Kunming City (69.87 points), Guiyang City (69.48 points).
From the geographical distribution of the bottom 10 cities, 4 cities belong to the central cities, 3 belong to the eastern cities, and 3 belong to the western cities.
Zhu Cambridge, vice president and secretary-general of the China Consumers Association, said: “From the perspective of regional comparison and the overall performance of cities, there are still large regional differences in consumer satisfaction. With the exception of individual cities, the eastern and southern cities, economic Cities with a high level of development score significantly higher than those in the central and western regions and cities with average economic development."
In terms of the "consumption environment" indicator, the "Report" shows that the national comprehensive score is 80.61 points, and 51 cities have a "consumption environment" score higher than the national comprehensive level.
The scores of 38 cities ranged from 75 to 80 points.
Among them, the top three cities are: Hangzhou (87.55 points), Nanjing (86.36 points), Xiamen (85.68 points); the bottom three cities are: Kunming (71.94 points), Handan City (71.22 points), Guiyang City (69.85 points).
The difference between the highest score and the lowest score was 17.7 points.
Zhu Cambridge said frankly that consumers' overall satisfaction with the consumption environment has improved, and they have higher evaluations of their right to choose and know, and relatively low evaluations of after-sales guarantee, fair prices, service levels, and truthful information.
"At present, consumers' right to choose and know has been respected and satisfied to a certain extent, and consumers' subjective rights are greatly protected." Professor Pan Huaiping of Northwest University School of Law pointed out that this aspect explains the law of consumer rights protection. The system is gradually improved; on the other hand, it shows that market prosperity provides alternative commodities, and market information and commodity information are the key elements for obtaining consumer groups.
Pan Huaiping said that the main factors for the optimization of the consumption environment and the satisfaction evaluation of the consumption environment are after-sales guarantee, fair prices, service levels, authenticity of information, and transaction security.
The evaluation of these factors is relatively low, which shows that the optimization of the current consumption environment is still at a low level.
"To improve the quality of the consumer environment, we must start from the perspective of serving consumers and protecting consumers, and establish a full-cycle governance awareness." Pan Huaiping pointed out that we must focus on protecting consumer rights, improve service levels, ensure the truthfulness of information, and ensure fair prices. , Ensure transaction security, strengthen after-sales protection.
Zhu Cambridge called for the establishment and improvement of a standard system for consumer products and services, and promotion of the upgrading of product quality and service levels by promoting the upgrading of standards.
Establish and improve the credit evaluation and supervision system to provide a management tool for urging market participants to jointly optimize the consumption environment.
Consumption supply and demand do not match
Vigorously promote consumption improvement and expansion
The "Report" pointed out that since 2020, due to the impact of the epidemic, a large number of consumer demand has been suppressed or delayed, and consumption vitality and motivation are insufficient. Local governments and relevant business operators have launched related shopping festivals and consumption promotion activities, which have achieved good results.
"The total retail sales of social consumer goods for the whole year of 2020 is 391981 trillion yuan. Although it has declined compared with 2019, it also fully demonstrates the strong purchasing power and consumption motivation of consumers." Zhu Cambridge pointed out that it is necessary to see social consumer goods in recent years. The reality of the gradual slowdown in the growth rate of total retail sales and the lack of domestic consumption motivation further reflects the problem of mismatch between consumption supply and demand.
In terms of "consumption supply" indicators, the "Report" shows that 100 cities have a national comprehensive score of 81.35 points, and 52 cities have a "consumption supply" score higher than the national comprehensive level.
81 cities scored between 75 and 85 points.
Among them, the top three cities are: Hangzhou (90.01 points), Quanzhou (87.71 points), Chengdu (86.95 points); the bottom three cities are: Kunming (72.08 points), Zunyi City (71.99 points), Guiyang City (67.43 points).
The difference between the highest score and the lowest score was 22.58 points.
Zhu Cambridge pointed out that the evaluation results show that consumers' overall satisfaction with consumer supply continues to increase.
"Specifically for each sub-indicator, it will be found that consumers are more recognized for the convenience of supply, and their evaluation of the abundance and innovation of supply is relatively low, which also points out a specific direction for improving consumption and supply."
How to improve consumption supply, Zhu Cambridge suggests, accurately grasp consumer demand, analyze and respond to the consumption ability and demand characteristics of different consumer groups, and accurately grasp the consumption characteristics and consumption trends at different stages.
“At the same time, promote the quality and expansion of consumption, and increase the enrichment and innovation of supply under the premise of ensuring the stability of supply.” Zhu Cambridge proposed that on the one hand, expansion of consumption should fill the gap in quantity and guide the rationalization of traditional consumption supply. The expansion of emerging consumer supply provides consumers with more choices and greater choices; on the other hand, through deepening supply-side reforms, guiding enterprises to support consumption and supply innovation with new technologies, new products, new models, and new business formats. Continuously optimize the quality of consumption and supply to inject new vitality into the market.
Relatively low transaction security evaluation
Strengthen the construction of supervision and law enforcement mechanism
In recent years, consumer safety has become one of the most important issues for consumers.
On February 13th, an amusement project in Shaoyang, Hunan Province broke down. The flying chairs on which tourists were riding out of control fell on the ground. The accident caused more than ten people to be injured. On February 18th, a red bridge in Mianyang, Sichuan broke down and several tourists were injured... …In recent years, some safety accidents such as consumer places and consumer facilities have entered the public eye. Coupled with the continued impact of the epidemic, the importance of the safety of consumer places and consumer facilities has become increasingly prominent.
In this regard, Zhu Cambridge called on the regulatory authorities to urge operators to strengthen their awareness of risk and responsibility, and to investigate potential vulnerabilities and weaknesses in consumption risks, so as to provide strong support for consumers' safe consumption.
In addition to personal safety, consumers are increasingly concerned about technical algorithms, financial security, and information leakage.
The "Report" shows that consumers have relatively low evaluations of transaction security, and nearly 20% of consumers have experienced information leakage.
"In consumption scenarios, consumers mainly face consumer safety issues such as personal safety, personal information safety, and fund safety." Pan Huaiping said that the security of trading venues, trading platforms and other trading environments should be strengthened.
"Consumers should pay attention to protecting personal information and consumer information." Hua Guoyu, an associate professor at the School of Law of People’s Public Security University of China, reminded that the sale of personal information has formed an underground industrial chain. From collection to sale and use, all links may endanger citizens’ information security. Case.
"The upstream of this black-and-grey industry chain is information leakage, the midstream is information processing and sales, and the downstream is using citizens' personal information to carry out money laundering, fraud and illegal promotion and other illegal and criminal activities." Hua Guoyu said that the cyber security law clearly stipulates that stealing or Where personal information is obtained by other illegal methods, illegally sold, or illegally provided to others, and does not constitute a crime, the illegal income shall be confiscated by the public security organs and a fine of one to ten times the illegal income shall be imposed. If there is no illegal income, a one million yuan shall be imposed Fines below RMB yuan.
Regarding the issue of consumer information leakage, Pan Huaiping told a reporter from the Rule of Law Daily that, on the one hand, consumers must increase their awareness of personal information; on the other hand, they must increase the punishment of business operators for leaking consumer information. If the consumer’s information causes damage to the consumer’s personal and property, punitive compensation should be given.
"The key to protecting the safety of consumer transactions lies in the enterprise." Liu Junhai, a professor at the Renmin University of China Law School, said that enterprises are the first person to protect consumer safety and have the responsibility to protect consumer privacy.
Zhu Cambridge called on the regulatory authorities to strengthen the construction of consumer safety protection systems and regulatory enforcement mechanisms, and further strengthen the system safeguard measures for the consumption link, especially the design of the access system.
"It is also necessary to establish and improve a mechanism for co-construction and sharing of safe consumption information." Zhu Cambridge said that by establishing and improving mechanisms for the disclosure of operator credit information, personal integrity file records, and consumer evaluation information disclosure, the degree of information asymmetry in the consumption process is reduced. , Allowing consumers to consume clearly.
In addition, it is necessary to improve the pre-judgment and retrospective mechanism of consumption risk, make every effort to ensure consumption safety, reduce consumer anxiety, and try to avoid the spillover and expansion of risk issues in the consumption field.
High cost of rights protection, low efficiency of rights protection
Improve the supervision mechanism of consumer rights protection
The "Report" shows that among the three first-level indicators that constitute consumer satisfaction, the score of "consumption rights protection" is relatively the lowest, at 74.7 points, which is far behind the two indicators of "consumption supply" and "consumption environment".
Judging from the scores of the first-level indicators of the 100 cities, "consumption rights protection" is generally the lowest-scoring first-level indicator, and is the key shortcoming of the results of consumer satisfaction evaluation.
Zhu Cambridge said that according to the evaluation results in recent years, consumer rights protection has always been a weak item in consumer satisfaction evaluation. Not only has it ranked the lowest among the three primary indicators for four consecutive years, but also has a significant gap with consumer supply and consumer environment scores.
Especially for the efficiency of rights protection and the results of rights protection among them, the overall evaluation of consumers is not good.
Liu Junhai said frankly that the high cost of rights protection, the low benefits of rights protection, and the higher the cost of rights protection than the benefits of rights protection are important reasons for the low evaluation of consumer rights.
At present, the Consumer Rights Protection Law grants consumer association organizations at the provincial level and above the status of being the subject of consumer public interest litigation, but the reality is that there are not many consumer civil public interest litigations filed by the National Consumer Association.
Liu Junhai called for the amendment of relevant laws and regulations to further lower the threshold for the subject of public interest litigation, and allow consumer associations at or above the county level to be eligible subjects to initiate consumer civil public interest litigation.
"The low efficiency of the current complaint mechanism and dispute resolution mechanism is a prominent problem that restricts consumer rights protection." Pan Huaiping suggested establishing a sound consumer rights protection supervision mechanism, unblocking complaint channels, ensuring rapid response and rapid resolution, and handling inconveniences in a timely manner. If a complaint or prevarication is made, or if the complaint is not dealt with in a timely manner, it shall be supervised and held accountable.
"Although consumption does not come for the purpose of protecting rights, the perception of rights protection will directly affect consumers' future consumer confidence and consumption decisions." Zhu Cambridge said that in fact, consumption risk issues frequently occur, and consumer rights protection is difficult and difficult to deal with. Slowness and unsatisfactory results are also outstanding shortcomings that affect consumer confidence.
To this end, Zhu Cambridge suggested to further establish and improve the effectiveness of the cooperation mechanism of consumer rights protection work departments, strengthen the supervision of the whole process before and after the event, strengthen the administrative protection of consumer rights, and avoid separate affairs or even mutual prevarication.
Zhu Cambridge called for further broadening of rights protection channels, building a multi-level channel that vertically covers operators, industry associations, relevant departments, and rights protection agencies, providing multiple channels such as telephone, network, and window horizontally, and establishing a unified record and publicity of rights protection system.
Hua Guoyu pointed out that the protection of consumer rights also requires the market supervision department to take the initiative to regulate market order and transaction behavior.
In particular, it is necessary to further improve the linkage mechanism between administrative law enforcement and criminal justice in the field of market supervision, especially food and drug safety, and strengthen the effectiveness of law enforcement.
"Strengthen the construction of professional consumer rights protection organizations, establish a diversified dispute resolution mechanism, improve litigation, arbitration and mediation and other systems, and strengthen the role of consumer relief and rights protection." Zhu Cambridge suggested to further improve the transparency of consumer rights protection work and enhance consumers The degree of trust in the rights protection procedures and the recognition of the results of rights protection.