Consumer Law Reform

The Direct Selling Association (DSA) today endorsed the review of consumer laws issued by the Minister of Consumer Affairs.

“The paper today raises a number of suggestions to enhance consumer protection and while some of the finer details still need to be ironed out, this is a move in the right direction” said DSA Executive Director Garth Wyllie

The need for change has been evident for many years and we believe that by incorporating many of the highly prescriptive legislations into a more principled basis of legislation, this should be both a simplification and an empowerment of consumer rights through both self enforcement and the ability of the Commerce Commission to enforce rouge marketers.

The move to redefine Door to Door Selling as one form of Direct Selling is entirely consistent with the industry perspective and while it may be of concern to some businesses that they will now face a cooling off period, DSA members have been bound by this requirement for more than 20 years irrespective of whether the sale was on credit or cash.

If you have a good product, can justify your price and you treat your customer right, then cooling off should not create an issue. We will be advocating that this cooling off should not prevent delivery of the product or payment but must be an absolute right of the consumer should they change their mind.

Many DSA members offer far longer periods with an absolute money back guarantee on the products they sell and the level of actual cancellations is incredibly small.

Some existing retail businesses who are now stepping in catalogue selling or direct response marketing will find this quite different for their business but these will be some of the areas that will need to be clarified within this mind-shift legislative change.

“We do not see these changes as being detrimental to our Direct Selling members, just the law catching up to some of the enhanced protections already offered by the DSA Code of Practice”, said Mr Wyllie.

These changes will however mean that business as a whole and not just Direct Sellers, will need to be more aware of their compliance obligations and to ensure they have robust compliance programmes in place. DSA members have the advantage that most of these changes are already the rules by which they work to.

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