The NfCG Members' Meeting was held, very appropriately as it turned out, at the offices of one of our Corporate Associates, The Direct Marketing Association (DMA). Robert Dirskovski, who is policy adviser on 'Telecommerce' to the DMA, revealed at the meeting that they were involved with others in setting up an accreditation scheme for those who engage in retail trading over the Internet.
Electronic retailing seems to be growing apace and one of the few factors holding it back is the understandable reluctance of potential customers to submit their credit card and personal details to a seemingly disembodied seller which may, or may not, put this information to clandestine use and may, or may not, fulfil the order. Trust UK is a serious attempt to create a situation where customers can pass over these details, knowing that they will be treated honestly and in strict confidence.
It is the Government's stated intention to "make the UK the best place in the world to trade in e-commerce". It is as a response to this call that the Consumers' Association and the Alliance for Electronic Businesses (see below) came together to set up TrustUK which was revealed to businesses in February and will be launched to the public by the time you read this.
The Government's Consumer White Paper sees consumer protection as strengthened by self regulating codes of practice set up by Trade Associations and other appropriate bodies (the Code 'Owners'), and will empower the Office of FairTrading (OFT') to accredit them. It will be up to these Code Owners to see that their members fulfil, when joining, all the requirements of the codes, and through proper policing, continue to do so.
In agreement with the OFT, TrustUK will be the accreditation body for e-commerce and will evaluate schemes set up by such Code Owners as the DMA themselves and CA, which has its Web Trader organisation. This could include the rather confusingly named Trust-On-Line body, which is busy signing up traders to its commendably comprehensive code of practice. Mr. Dirskovski pointed out that although both CA and the DMA were involved in setting up TrustUK, it did not follow that their codes would be acceptable!
The body which actually decides on accreditation, the Approval Committee. will be chaired from outside bodies such as Caroline Banks from the OFT and Christine Farnish from the Financial Services Authority as members. NfCG will be represented by Sue Payne.
Any code submitted for accreditation will be examined in detail to see that it requires members to advertise truthfully, market appropriately to children, establish privacy for retail customers' data and security for payments, give transaction details before purchase and have transparent and quickly responsive complaints handling and redress systems.
The Code Owners will be held responsible for members fulfilling the code, monitoring redress systems and expelling members who fail to follow the code. If, however, an occasion arises when a member of an accredited code fails to make proper redress and the code owner is equally at fault, then the customer will be able to seek redress from TrustUK. In this hopefully unlikely event one would expect TrustUK to withdraw accreditation from the Code Owner and all its members and give this extreme step much publicity. Innocent members could join another accredited body or even set up their own association to apply for accreditation.
Web Traders
who are members of an accredited code will be able to display a
logo for identification and this logo will receive wide publicity when TrustUK
is launched. Of course, it will be in the interest of Code Owners and individual
traders to carry out their own publicity when accredited. The search engine
YAHOO has agreed to identify all firms which are members of an accredited code.
All in all, this scheme seems destined to become very widely known, to such an
extent that it will eventually be difficult to be a successful web trader
without belonging to an accredited body.
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