I am the law
Europe's scrutiny of the technology sector continued today, as it announced the results of a "crackdown on websites selling consumer electronics goods".
Focusing internally, rather than on US tech companies, for a change, EU consumer commissioner has sought to justify her salary by looking into 369 of the biggest technology e-tailers across the EU to see if they were adhering to EU consumer rights laws.
The study, conducted in May but which took over three months to publish for some reason, found 55 percent of the websites "showed irregularities in particular relating to: misleading information about consumer rights; misleading information about the total cost of the product; or incomplete contact details for the trader."
The UK hasn't released the names of any of the six websites flagged up in the UK, but Norway has revealed that Komplett and DSGi owned Pixmania are among its offending sites, so there are clearly some big players being affected.
"We targeted websites selling electronic goods because I know from my own mail bag, and we know from the level of complaints coming into European Consumer Centres that these are a real problem area for consumers," said Kuneva.
"We discovered that more than half of the retailers selling on-line electronic goods are letting consumers down. This is a Europe-wide problem which needs a European solution. There is a lot of work to be done in the months ahead to clean up this sector, Europe's consumers deserve better."
