Research On The Settlement Of Consumers' Dispute

The protection of consumers' right concerns the achievement of each person's happiness. As the key method to guarantee the fundamental rights, it decides on why the state and government should exist, and influences the economic growth and the creation of fortune. The issue of guaranteeing the consumers' right and interest does not come into being until the human history developed into a certain stage. During the period of monopoly capitalism, the consumers were placed at such a weak and inferior position in the market that they needed special legal protection.In most of countries, the consumer is entitled of special right that differs from a general contract signer. The government guarantees the right and interest of consumers by strengthening administrative protection, establish strict product responsibility and set up vindictive damages, and so on. To settle down the consumers' dispute, what should be considered includes the inferior position of consumers, the feature of actural fairness, and the settlement of dispute as a characteristic of remedies. Methods for the settlement of dispute can be conciliation, mediation, arbitration, administrative adjudication and litigation. The conciliation between the dealer and consumer is the most economic way. But it lacks attraction because the conciliation agreement has no express legal force. Also, the mediation has no legal force so that it plays a declining role in guaranteeing the consumer's right and interest. Administrative adjudication is charactered by free of charge, short period and simple procedure, and the administrative organ has power to order to make correction, to educate and to impost administrative penalty. But the current law has not granted administrative organs the power to make administrative adjudication on consuming dispute. Judicial method is the final defensive line of secial justice, and the the eventural way to settle down the dispute. However, the present juedical procedure is complicated and lasts a rahter long period of time, and it costs too much in energy, investigation, communication and economy.In the respect of the improvement of resolution channels of consumers' dispute, it can be improved as follows:(1) as for reconciliation channel, its effectness may be improved by establishing the reconciliation system between the consumers and dealer; (2) with mediation, the parties concerned should be entitled of the right to regret unless they can prove that the mediation violates the principle of voluntary participation or breaks the law; (3) in arbitration, small-amount consumers' arbitrary courts may be established in the consumer protection organization at all levels by amending the law; (4) whileas in administrative adjudication, the law should entrust the same legal force to it as that of a general administrative act. Unless the parties concerned think it unlawful and intend to withdraw it by judical way, the administrative adjudication should maintain its legal force, and (5) among different kinds of judicial ways, representative action, group action, public interest action and civil public interest action are all relatively active systems, which should be put into use by admending the Civil Litigation Law and the Consumer Protection Law.