A Study On Legal Issues Of Prepaid Consumption

In recent years, with the rapid development of the economy, prepaid consumptionexists in many corners of our lives. What is a prepaid spending? Consumer spending isprepaid to the operator after a certain amount in advance, in accordance with theagreement of both parties to enjoy the consumption patterns of goods or servicesprovided by operators of several times. Prepaid consumption exists in what areas? As aprevalent business model, prepaid spending is quite prevalent at the mall departmentstores, supermarkets, shopping, beauty salons, leisure and fitness industry, and alsoprevalent in food and beverage industry and car wash industry. Prepaid consumptionwhy so popular? In the prepaid consumption, consumer prepaid card to play the role ofa consumer medium, the use of prepaid cards facilitate consumer spending, andconsumers do not need to carry cash, convenient settlement, there is likely to enjoysome handle card discounts and deals; operators consumers can also receive advanceprepayments, increased liquidity, and expand the scale of operation, capture marketshare and position, so that mutually beneficial and win-win.Although prepaid consumption is a win-win business model, consumers andoperators are reflected well, but controversy also increases at the same time. From thereaction around the Consumers’ Association in recent years, prepaid consumer disputehas become a key area of consumer complaints. Lack of awareness of integrity, hype,false advertising, operators to maximize the economic benefits ubiquitous, all of this isallowing consumers who use prepaid consumption in a relatively weak position, facinga more consumer risk, and therefore the interests of consumers are more vulnerable toabuse. October25,2013the National People’s Congress passed amendments to theConsumer Protection Act, a new law on the elimination of false propaganda, thestandard terms and other issues were more clearly defined, but also on the operatorsabide by social morality integrity management, consumer protection issues of personalinformation increases the terms of the original specification prepaid consumption amend Article47to Article53, but its content has not changed. In China, the laws andregulations to protect the prepaid consumption remains unsound, the operators lack ofcredit, consumer to safeguard legal right is also difficult, and regulation for prepaidconsumer are not in place, therefore, I think, it is necessary to do a comprehensive,in-depth study on legal issues of prepaid consumption, to better regulate prepaidconsumer market, protect the legitimate interests of operators and consumers who are inprepaid consumption area.This paper consists of four parts. The first part is the prepaid consumer overview.This part mainly do a brief introduction on prepaid consumption and elaborated twofeatures about prepaid consumption, including operators profit, consumer benefit andwin-win, as well as high risk of the prepaid consumption.The second part, expounded the problem of prepaid spending of China. Mainlyfrom four aspects such as unsound laws and regulations of prepaid consumer, theoperators lack of credit and consumer rights difficult, imperfect regulatory system, andcombined with the case, to elaborate the outstanding problems of prepaid consumptionexist.The third part is prepaid consumption system abroad and the enlightenment to ourcountry. Respectively, as examples of two countries, pointed out consumer prepaidsystem, the United States through access system, supervision system to build a moreperfect system of prepaid consumption system; Japan through the establishment ofdeposit system, monitoring system to improve their system. Through learn from theadvanced experience of the U.S. and Japan practice, draw inspiration to China.The fourth part is proposal of perfect the prepaid consumption system. By drawingthe United States, Japan’s advanced experience, and combined with reality of ourcountry to propose advises aimed at better solve our prepaid consumption problem, suchas perfect prepaid consumer legal system, improve the prepaid consumer credit system,management system and improve the prepaid consumption monitoring system, and soon.