Buyers are left to their own devices – Kommersant FM

The DNS chain of stores failed to retain goods purchased at erroneously ultra-low prices. Previously, the Supreme Court sided with the consumer in his dispute with the retailer. At the beginning of 2022, a resident of the Kurgan region, Evgeny Oleinikov, bought electronics worth 26 thousand rubles on the DNS website. But the store refused to send the order, citing a technical glitch. They claimed that in reality the goods cost tens of times more. One of the local courts sided with the seller. But when the proceedings reached the highest court, they made a decision to reconsider the case.

The Supreme Court took a similar position on other similar disputes. For example, when a resident of Ufa, as a result of a glitch, bought a TV on the Svyaznoy website for less than 500 rubles, and also when a Volgograd resident ordered luxury clothing from the Central Department Store at a price 800 times lower than the market price. The lower courts pointed to a clear technical error. Supreme – insisted that at the time of purchasing a product on the website, the price is fixed.

Thus, the situation is not in favor of the business, noted Yulia Paushkina, head of the commercial practice of the KIAP law office: “The most common argument that businesses rely on is that the seller had no intention of selling the goods at such a price, namely, there was a technical failure due to reasons beyond his control.” seller circumstances or due to the intervention of third parties, implying a hacker attack.

In such cases, the seller must order an examination, file a statement with the police and show in every possible way that he has taken a set of measures indicating that there was unauthorized intervention and the price was not agreed upon. This is naturally difficult. In general, the entire burden of proof in consumer disputes lies with the defendants. Moreover, if a specific employee of the seller made a mistake in the price, then the seller is responsible for his actions. If someone made a mistake on the technical side, I will be responsible to the consumer as a seller, but, in turn, I can recover damages from my performer.

However, it cannot be said that the flow of such claims has increased significantly. Naturally, as e-commerce gains momentum, the number of technical glitches will increase and the number of disputes will also increase.

At the same time, there are certain regions where so-called consumer extremism flourishes, when professional plaintiffs make money from business by looking for certain violations and failures.

Consumers have become, one might say, angrier. In general, the economic situation is forcing people who, in other situations, might not have filed claims, are now considering this method as an opportunity to make money. If the original cost of the goods was 1 thousand rubles, the court has the right to collect a penalty within the same amount, and also impose a fine of 50%.”

At the same time, a class action lawsuit against Aeroflot is currently pending in the Presnensky Court of Moscow. In October 2023, the carrier canceled tickets purchased by dozens of passengers from Yekaterinburg to Phuket: the cheapest of them cost about 6 thousand rubles. for a round trip flight. The company referred to a technical error: the regular price of such a package is from 60 thousand rubles. Now consumers are demanding the difference be returned to them, in total this is more than 7 million rubles.

And yet, by supporting consumers in such disputes, the courts encourage abuse on their part, Artem Denisov, managing partner of the Genesis law firm, is sure: “After the TSUM case, this trend was quite widely discussed in the legal community, it was said that marketplaces would now begin to catch on. As practice shows, including the decision on DNS, the case is, in fact, being replicated.

The Supreme Court does not deviate from its practice. And it seems to me that he will still have to correct this situation. If the practice becomes established that as a result of such failures the courts clearly side with consumers, then this will become widespread.

In principle, it is possible to crash websites so that their prices are displayed incorrectly using various software tools. But even if this is not done intentionally, failures quite often occur on the part of the provider, the developer of the software product.

These cases must apply the system that exists in the Anglo-Saxon legal system. There is a very successful test system related to the so-called good faith, that is, how conscientious a seller or buyer could sell or buy at such a price.”

What do retailers themselves think about such enforcement practices? President of the Association of Internet Trade Companies (AKIT) Artem Sokolov believes that there are now enough measures to protect against “consumer extremism”, and changes in legislation can lead to abuses on the part of businesses: “There are no more failures, it has become more difficult to work, because they we need to protect ourselves, and IT systems are being further developed and improved.

It is clear that each such case is the subject of the most serious investigation within the company. Everything is fine with the law; no changes need to be made to it.

Otherwise, we will engage in unfair competition, write that a product costs 1 thousand rubles, when in fact its price is 5 thousand rubles. We already had this stage in market development ten years ago. They have been and continue to be punished for this. It’s just that no one does this anymore, because the sales schemes are transparent, mostly prepayment.

More than 90% of online sales are carried out using non-cash payments, so where there was an advance payment, where the goods were reserved, there can be no other operating scenarios. And situations that are out of the ordinary should be treated this way; there is a court for this. There is both practice in one direction and in the other. The courts, as a rule, take into account the entire scope of the circumstances.”

At the same time, Aeroflot also explained the mass cancellation of tickets as a reluctance to violate antimonopoly laws. The carrier explained that it occupies a dominant position on the Yekaterinburg-Phuket route.

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Elizaveta Skobtsova