INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM, TRAVEL AND HOSPITALITY LAW -court compliance with outcomes (feedbacks in review websites,24 cooperation with search engines,25 “name and shame” techniques and blacklists,26 online intermediaries27). 3. ODR AND ACCESSIBILITY ODR platform needs to be user-friendly and accessible to all, including vulnerable consumers. Two broad categories of consumer vulnerability can be distinguished: ‘market-specific vulnerability’, which derives from the specific context of particular markets, and can affect a broad range of consumers within those markets; ‘vulnerability associated with personal characteristics’ such as physical disability, poor mental health or low incomes, which may result in individuals with those characteristics facing particularly severe, persistent problems across markets.28 24 Feedbacks in review websites have become a very useful mechanism for incentivising parties to participate in the dispute resolution process and reach the settlement which would be the basis for removal of the negative consumer posts and reviews or announcement of the out-of-court settlement against the consumer’s review. In order to avoid the consumer blackmailing traders, it will be necessary to include some tools, such as cease-and-desist letters to ensure the filtering of vexatious reviews, as well as blockchain technology to make review site more trustworthy. Moreover, a trader should be able to invite the consumer to initiate a claim in the ODR platform. If the consumer refuses to do so within an adequate period of time, then the negative posting should be automatically deleted or followed by a post that records the consumer’s refusal to participate in the dispute resolution process. See: Cortes, op. cit, 138. 25 The ODR platform and review sites could also cooperate with the search engines to rank down traders who have a high number of unresolved complaints or that have not complied with final outcomes. Although search engines are committed to neutrality, and so they would be reluctant to change their own settings, search engines could incorporate filters with this option, allowing users to decide whether to refine their browses. See: Cortes, op. cit, 138-139. 26 A number of ADR and ODR schemes already use ‘naming and shaming’ as an incentive for compliance and to warn consumers (e.g. the Internet Ombudsman in Austria publishes a Watchlist of traders that have generated multiple consumer complaints; the Swedish National Board for Consumer Disputes also makes available to the public its decisions for ‘naming and shaming’ traders for non-compliance; the Better Business Bureau (BBB), which rates traders in Canada and the USA taking into an account compliance of the trader with the outcomes). See: Cortes, op. cit, 139-140. 27 Intermediaries may be effective in encouraging compliance (escrow companies can hold the money related to the transaction; payment providers, such as credit card companies (i.e. Visa, MasterCard and American Express) and other online payment intermediaries (i.e. PayPal) can reverse payments in compliance with outcomes, moving sums in dispute from the seller’s account to the buyer’s; online regulators such as ICANN could potentially play a key role in blocking traders that engage in criminal activities through the cancellation of domain names when required by public enforcement bodies. These intermediaries can therefore play useful roles in ensuring quick enforcement without the need for judicial intervention. See: Cortes, op. cit, 140. 28 See: Consumer vulnerability: challenges and potential solutions, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/782542/CMA-Vulnerable_People_Accessible.pdf
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTE4NzM5Nw==