CONSUMER GUARANTEES IN E-COMMERCE ACCORDING TO THE UAE LEGISLATION

Hessa Abdullah Alhazaa

Abstract: Throughout this study, it became clear that the UAE legislator tried hard to achieve consumer protection by legislate some guarantees to protect consumers, and despite that, we found that there are several guarantees that the UAE legislator didn’t legislate, even if they were applicable in some store’s voluntary. It is not related to public order and therefore it’s not applicable by all stores. And the most important right that wasn’t legislated in UAE is the right of refund. This study was concerned with electronic commerce, so the existence of the right of refund in such commerce has become very necessary. This is because the electronic consumer lacks the right to review the commodity and is satisfied with the information, data, and images that the provider displays through his website. Therefore, there is a practical need to legislate this right to encourage electronic commerce and enable the consumer to inspect the goods after receiving them and give him time to think about refund. As for the other guarantees, it was legislated in UAE law, however we hope it to be modified to suit electronic commerce. And in terms of activating this legislation this law has been assigned to several parties, as explained in this study. Through the practical side, we found that each party is committed to its obligations and applies what the law has imposed on it. This study ended with several results that we showed in the conclusion, with several recommendations that we hope the legislator to adopt. The most important recommendation was to the UAE legislator to adopt the right of refund the goods in electronic commerce.