Russian consumers in the digital world behind the looking-glass: what do they complain about the most

The pre-industrial way of life is based on the personal labor of small proprietors – peasants, merchants, artisans – providing a simple reproduction of the traditional conditions of their life. Industrial – on the division of the most mechanized and automated labor of a large number of employees, ensuring the mass production of products (goods and services) in quantities proportional to the labor and capital expended – we see this in factories and large construction sites, in agricultural firms, retail chains, banks. ..

The post-industrial order is also characterized by the creation of mass products, but unlike the other two, the quantity of a product can grow following demand without a proportional increase in the costs of the creator. Things do not have this property, but information disseminated by radio and television networks, periodicals, scientific and artistic books, so this way of life could be called informational.

All three ways were also present in the USSR, only the “state of developed socialism” did not like the pre-industrial way, considered its carriers a historical relic and in every possible way forced it into the zone of the industrial way, which was considered progressive. In turn, many adherents of the post-industrial order did not like the ideological control inherent in this state and its lack of alternatives as an employer. As soon as they were allowed to compete with official propaganda during the perestroika period, it failed miserably, and the Soviet state ceased to exist after it.

But since then, the disposition of the three modes in the world has also changed dramatically, the area of ​​​​existence of the industrial mode has noticeably shrunk in favor of the post-industrial one, which not only expanded many times, but also noticeably transformed as a result of the digital revolution, which gave an unlimited number of consumers the opportunity to use the Internet, social networks and instant messengers. . So now we can distinguish three subspecies of this way of life according to the way consumers prefer to get access to information, goods and services: pre-digital (offline), digital (online) and post-digital, based on artificial intelligence (AI).

I think the first two do not require comments, but the third one does, because very few of us have personally encountered him and understand what he promises us. Meanwhile, perhaps we are on the verge of a revolution even more radical than digital. After all, although the Internet has opened up the possibility of online access to information, goods and services, we choose them ourselves. Artificial intelligence, on the other hand, is ready to free us from the burden of personal choice, taking it upon itself, and, most likely, we will like its choice – because it will know us better than we ourselves, and constantly improve this knowledge. Until we stop changing, adapting to the environment, since there will no longer be any need for this, and AI is unlikely to recommend reading dystopias about robots that have replaced people in the ruins of their civilization.

But for the time being, one can consider such a prospect too far away and believe that the minds of people capable of creating AI will be able to protect our descendants from being enslaved by it, I will move on to simpler, but very painful current problems of consumers in the most massive segment of the digital world – electronic commerce – and share my thoughts on how they should be addressed.

Judging by the topics of appeals to us and to the authorities of Rospotrebnadzor, these are, first of all, delays in the delivery of purchased goods or delivery of goods that are not ordered, failure by marketplaces and sellers of obligations to the consumer in cases of refusal to purchase without claims to quality or return of low-quality goods. Such conflicts, as a rule, are resolved out of court in favor of the consumer, unless, of course, his requirements are legal. But it happens that not quickly and with unnecessary expenditure of the consumer’s nerves and the reputational costs of his counterparty.

All this can be avoided if it is more rational to organize work with consumer appeals. Although sales contracts with them are concluded and implemented exclusively online and according to unified legally established rules, there are no such unified rules for considering online applications from consumers and out-of-court settlement of disputes with them, and the internal rules of companies are not always public, and the consumer cannot influence neither on their content, even if it is contrary to the law, nor on their execution by the employees of the company. We offered the association of e-commerce companies our cooperation in creating industry standards for the work of marketplaces with consumer claims; and while the industry is more concerned about conflicts with its employees and partners, I hope we can do it together.

However, this is only the visible part of the iceberg of problems, while the underwater one is much more significant in terms of the mass character and severity of the consequences, although consumers with these problems turn to us much less often, realizing that social activists are unable to help the victims.

The most serious is the theft of consumer funds by Internet scammers. The number of victims and the amount of harm caused are growing year by year due to the impunity of fraudsters and their advanced development of the most effective methods of deceiving citizens, including the use of AI.

The next thing to note is the problem of personal data leakage. The number of such cases increased by five times in 2022, and, as experts noted, there was no apparent commercial interest from the publishers of the stolen data. That is, customer data was stolen not so much for the sake of ransom, but to cause reputational damage to the “hacked” company – apparently, on the order of its unscrupulous competitor.

Both of these problems are caused by criminal acts that must be stopped and investigated by law enforcement agencies. But since the situation with them is only getting worse, I see the only way out is to involve detective agencies and private detectives in their solution on the terms of a “success fee”, that is, paying them as a reward a certain part of the funds returned to consumers, stolen by fraudsters, as well as losses from data leakage. prevented by their work. Leading e-commerce market participants could do this.

Another problem is the sale of counterfeit products on this market: products whose main consumer properties do not correspond to the mandatory information about it provided by the manufacturer or seller, and counterfeit products that violate the rights of the owner of its trademark and other related intellectual rights. In essence, this is also a fraud, and also, as a rule, with impunity. The law does not make marketplaces responsible for such violations of sellers, and rightly so – the need to totally check the products offered by sellers would inevitably paralyze their work, which we need so much.

But it is possible and necessary to oblige them to set up their programs in such a way that they do not allow offers to be issued that do not contain all the mandatory information about the product, its manufacturer and seller, provided for by the Law on Consumer Rights Protection, and automatically check that part of this information , which can be verified in this way. I think this will better protect us from falsification and counterfeit than mandatory digital marking, which only confirms that the manufacturer paid the operator of the marking system for the digital mark applied to the product.