Service providers and consumers will have to re-sign the service contracts, since the Consumer Right Protection Law, with many new articles beneficial to consumers, has taken effect since July 1, 2011.

When the law was ratified by the National Assembly, experts anticipated that the sample contracts in providing electricity, water, telecom, insurance and cable TV services would need to be re-designed, because the service providers impose their will in the current contracts which contain the articles violating the consumers’ rights if referring to the Consumer Right Protection Law.

New law will stop violations

Bach Van Mung, Head of the Competition Administration Department (CAD) under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, said that for a long time, consumer rights has been violated in many fields, especially in the monopoly fields, where there are only one or a few service providers.

When using the services, such as electricity, water and telecom, consumers have to sign contracts with the service providers, while they do not have the right to negotiate with the service providers or set their requirements. In case of disputes, it is the consumers who are always put in a disadvantage, because the provisions stipulated in the contracts always bring the upper hand to service providers.

With the Consumer Right Protection Law having taken effect since July 1, service providers will have to satisfy the legitimate demands from customers.

In order to ease the monopoly, the new law has set up new regulations on some essential goods and services which relate to many customers. The essential goods and service providers will have to use the sample contracts to be registered at the state management agencies, to be sure that the provisions in the contracts are fair and equal, which can protect consumers.

The Prime Minister will release the list of the goods and services that need to register sample contracts at state management agencies.

“We are drafting the list to be submitted to the Prime Minister for approval,” Mung said. The compilers believe that electricity and water supply, telecom (fixed line and mobile services), insurance (both life and non-life insurance), banking services (especially credit cards) and cable TV services will be named in the list.

Mung went on to say that in principle, state management agencies will have to examine the sample contracts compiled by enterprises. The state agencies have the right to request enterprises not to use the contracts, or eliminate the provisions in the contracts, which they believe are unreasonable.

It may happen that mistakes are taken during the verification, which leas to the fact that consumers’ right cannot be protected. In this case, state management agencies will have to take responsibility for this.

Enterprises still don’t know what they have to do

Representatives from the Electricity of Vietnam (EVN), the only electricity supplier, water suppliers and telecom companies all say they have heard about the new law, but they still do not know what they have to do to implement the law.

The most worrying thing for the enterprises is that it would take time and money to re-sign service contracts, while the number of customers is too big.

EVN for example, has a huge amount of customers of 17.12 million, while telecom companies, and Internet, insurance, cable TV service providers have 100 million clients. It will take at least several months to compile new sample contracts, while the cost for re-signing contracts would be up to several trillions of dong.

A representative of a telecom company said that his company will have to obey the law, though he still does not know how much money this work will cost.

TP