On Consumers’ Legal Protection Of Prepaid Consumption

Prepaid consumption is a new model of consumption, as a win-win consumption pattern, it greatly promotes the prosperity of market. But in reality, with many causes, consumers of prepaid consumption can not be protected effectively. Focusing on the legal protection of the rights and interests of the consumers, the author carries out the writing of this paper in accordance with the writing idea of "ask question, analyze and solve problems" and tries to provide suggestions on how to improve our laws on the protection of consumers and contribute his power to safeguard the legal rights and interests of consumers through analyzing the definition, characteristics, classification, and legal nature of prepaid consumption, summarizing the present situation and existing problems of the prepaid consumption and absorbing foreign advanced experience and methods of regulation.This paper is divided into four parts. The first part is the definition of prepaid consumption. Prepaid consumption is a model that the operator collects the fee in advance and provides service or goods later in several times, by which consumers enjoy certain discounts. It has the characteristic of prepayment, mutual benefit and finance and its legal nature is "consumer service contract".The second part discusses the problems and the legislation of consumer protection. First, it summarizes the problems that is against the interests of consumers, including the consumers’rights to know, to be traded fairly, to get security and keep privacy. Second, it analyzes the laws and regulations on the protection and finds the legal causes of the infringement:the lack of specific legal provisions, the weak operation of laws and regulations and the simple legal responsibility of operators. What’s more, some local regulations about the protection in China is quite referencable. Next, take the USA, Japan and Chinese Taiwan for example to inspect the overseas legal system of prepaid consumption, to provide a reference for prepaid consumption legal system. Finally, it gives suggestions to build the system of protection by improving the "Consumer Rights Protection Law", "contract law" and the "Administrative Measures on Single-purpose Commercial Prepaid Cards (for Trial Implementation)",which includes further defining the informational type of protection, introducing the shifting burden of proof into prepaid consumption, increasing the obligations of operators, establishing deposit systems, naming the "consumer service contract" and improving the "Administrative Measures on Single-purpose Commercial Prepaid Cards (for Trial Implementation)" in all-round.