Interacting with businesses online often means clicking “agree” on a long list of terms and conditions and/or end-user license agreements. This is done often without fully understanding the implications of the agreement and likely sometimes without even reading the full way through. A new report released by the Consumers Council of Canada is pointing to the risk faced by both consumers and businesses from many of these poorly understood legal instruments.
As reported in the 2015 .CA Factbook, Statistics Canada says that Canadian enterprises sold more than $136 billion in goods and services over the Internet in 2013, up from $122 billion a year earlier. Interacting with businesses online often means clicking “agree” on a long list of terms and conditions and/or end-user license agreements. This is done often without fully understanding the implications of the agreement and likely sometimes without even reading the full way through.
In a report released this morning, the Consumers Council of Canada is pointing to the risk faced by both consumers and businesses from many of these poorly understood legal instruments.
“Trust and confidence is absolutely critical to electronic commerce and this practice of companies using long, complex, and poorly-understood terms and conditions statements has the potential to undermine these important commercial relationships,” said David Fowler, director of marketing and communications at CIRA. “With so much at stake for the growth and development of e-commerce, it’s critical that businesses come to terms with this issue and communicate with their customers in ways they can understand.”
The key concern here is the trust between consumers and businesses that is at the core of many online businesses. According to the Consumers Council, consumers report feeling that companies with complex terms and conditions do not have their best interests in mind.
“We believe enlightened companies will see these recommendations as a way to reduce their own business risk and strengthen trusted relationships with their customers,” said Howard Deane, who authored the report for the Consumers Council of Canada.
As consumers become more concerned with privacy and more aware of their rights, they are likely to take this into account when making commercial decisions. Companies treating their customers with respect and forthrightness might be the ones who come out on top.
The recommendations offered from the Consumers Council should not be out of reach for most companies. They recommend creating plain language explanations of legal documents, ensure that headlines and tables of contents are written in the consumer voice and that changes are well tracked and documented.
The full report, which was funded by the CIRA Community Investment Program, is available online here. We also talked to Howard about the report for our .CA Voice podcast. Listen to the interview here.
Ryan Saxby Hill is an expert in communications and digital marketing. He is served as the communications manager at CIRA from 2014-2017. Previously, Ryan led media relations and online engagement efforts at the Canada Foundation for Innovation and has held positions handling global communications and PR programs for Ciena Corporation and Nortel Networks.
Ryan is a founder of Apartment613, an award winning Ottawa-based digital community media organization and serves on the board of directors for the Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation, one of Canada’s most innovative non-profit housing providers.
