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Has Facebook made a fool of you? Could the EU come to your rescue?
April 12, 2011
In the good old days men joined the French Foreign Legion “to forget”; perhaps a doomed love affair, an unhappy marriage, gambling debts or any manner of unpleasantness.
No longer is that possible with Facebook (and other social platforms) recording every man and woman’s indiscretion for posterity. In similar vein, Twitter is constantly criticised for being inane - who wants to know what you had for breakfast? Social media platforms expose every aspect of our lives for inspection, transmission, discussion and, sometimes, ridicule.
The sheer complication of privacy settings on Facebook, where openness rather than discretion is the default setting, mean that our private thoughts, comments and, alarmingly, photographs, all meant for a very select audience of “friends”, can be disseminated far and wide. Forwarded on in a fit of giggles, one lone Facebook indiscretion could mean that Andy Warhol’s prediction of “15 minutes of fame” could be coming to you, and soon. Unfortunately.
Your sudden fame will not just be limited to quarter of an hour: once out in the cloud, it will be preserved for posterity. That poses a further problem: where exactly is your data being processed? It may well be outside Europe, making it very difficult to object to photos etc being removed.
But not if the European Union has its way. The EU Commission has recently flexed its muscles and published proposals that would make Facebook “forget” all those shaming photographs of you lying in a gutter dressed as a nun after ten pints and a vindaloo.
As reported in The Guardian, EU Justice Minister Viviane Reding announced an intention to unveil a package of proposals shortly which will force social networking sites to have high levels of privacy as the default setting. And users will get the right to withdraw their consent to their information being processed. In other words, everyone living in the EU will be given the “right to be forgotten” online, and all their personal material removed. Failure by a social networking platform, even one based outside the EU, will lead to legal proceedings and sanctions being imposed by national privacy watchdogs.
It is also proposed that the companies will have to prove that they need to retain any information they stored, taking the burden off the individual to prove why it should not be processed.
It’s a very welcome initiative, although we will have to wait and see what the proposals look like when published. It must be right that people can demand social networking sites remove embarrassing information about them, especially when it can rear its head several years later and prejudice a job application.
What remains clear, however, is that law on privacy and social media is still very confused. How an individual’s right to privacy can be protected on a medium that is fundamentally dedicated to sharing and openness is probably the biggest issue facing legislators and lawyers over the next few years.
More fundamentally, these new proposals are an attempt by a supra-national organisation to take control over a phenomenon (how else can you describe Facebook et al?) that defies national boundaries in its scope and reach. I think the EU is to be applauded for pursuing this agenda (are you reading Nigel Farage?)
Now, there was something else I had to do but can’t quite recall what it was...
Michael Scutt, Dale Langley & Co
Online customer confidence
April 07, 2010
UK shoppers spent £38 billion over the Internet last year, almost 10 per cent of their total retail spend for the year. That’s double the European average, according to a recent report by the Centre for Retail Research.
But if you think that suggests the nation’s consumers are a savvy, confident bunch you might be wrong. Earlier in March, a government survey also revealed that:
- 77 per cent of customers aren’t aware of the differences between their online and high-street rights
- 60 per cent are less likely to return goods bought online than goods purchased on the high street.
What are we to make of these findings? First, let’s clear up the key difference between distance-selling and bricks-and-mortar customer rights – the cooling-off period – because it’s one that vexes retailers as well as customers. Then we can look at how businesses should deal with customer confusion – and the benefits that can bring to sales.
Clearing up the cooling-off provision
When a customer buys online, they get a seven working-day window during which they can cancel the contract for any reason, including just changing their mind. Broadly speaking, this cooling-off period starts on the day the customer receives their goods, or, for services, the day the contract is concluded.
The rules aren’t quite that simple, though. Various admin details and types of goods can affect, or end, the customer’s rights to a full cancellation and refund. For example:
- a customer wishing to cancel must tell you so in writing (fax or email count) – a phone call isn’t enough
- you must give customers certain written information about their online contract – any delays can extend their cooling-off period by up to three months
- various goods don’t qualify – these include items you’ve personalised for a customer, perishable goods (eg food) and audio-visual products that have been opened
- if the customer agrees that performance of a service should begin before the end of the cooling-off period that would normally apply, then the right to cancel ends when the service starts.
Building trust out of confusion
Many retailers’ response to customers’ lack of knowledge about their cooling-off rights will be something along the lines of “Thank God for small mercies”.
It’s tough times out there and if customers aren’t cancelling orders, then so much the better. At the end of the day, online retailers are required to comply with distance-selling rules, not to provide educational bulletins for customers on them.
True enough. But there’s a bigger picture here.
Surveys show that customers are still wary about shopping online. Trust remains at a premium. So there’s competitive advantage to be found by businesses that outperform their peers at generating it.
Being upfront and accommodating about your rules and procedures about cancellations are an important part of building online trust. Customers want to know you’re not going to suck them into a black hole of non-existent customer service if it turns out they change their mind about a purchase.
Look at Amazon, the self-styled “world’s most customer-centric company”. They bend over backwards to inform customers of their rights and to make cancellation as easy as possible. In doing so, they’ve achieved something close to profit alchemy – turning customers’ lack of knowledge into a way of generating the trust that online businesses crave.
Not for Amazon the dubious benefit of having confused customers hang on to a few items that might otherwise have been returned as cancellations. Instead, they’ve bet on trust and are selling products by the shedload that might otherwise never have been ordered.
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