Amazon is breaking the Button law in Germany

The law states that all sellers need to provide an explicit confirmation of payment required to their customers in order for transactions to be valid. Sellers must, therefore, provide information on exactly what products customers are buying, and exactly what they must pay to receive them: protecting consumers from monetary deceptions and subscription traps.

But not all sellers have adapted to the consumer protection law: several big merchants like Amazon and Ebay are still using a format that’s illegal in Germany.

The Button Law

The Button Law requires sellers to do four things:

1. To clearly explain the essential characteristics of goods or services which are on sale, and to make those characteristics clear throughout the checkout process.
2. To clearly outline the total price of goods and services, including all taxes and other costs, plus delivery and shipping. In cases where these costs cannot be known in advance, the seller must outline how they will be calculated.
3. To clearly outline whether something is a subscription or not, the total price of said subscription, the monthly costs, and the method in which these costs are calculated.
4. If a contract or subscription is being sold, the terms of termination must be made clear as well as the terms of the contract or subscription.

These requirements are designed to protect German customers from being misled.

The consequences

Once the law became active, any contract between a seller and customer was void if any of the requirements above wasn’t met. This meant that customers wouldn’t be obligated to pay!

Anyone selling in Germany who doesn’t work within the law may have unfair competition claims filed against them, lose income from customers, and have their products unlisted from websites.

This means that those selling via sites like Amazon could lose out – just because the marketplace giant still hasn’t changed its layout, despite having had seven years to do. In a similar way, Amazon has had to pull 400,000 products from its marketplace in India – showcasing that it (along with a number of other merchant platforms) simply doesn’t prioritize those selling on its site.

The solution

Lobbying enormous platforms to adapt local laws is simply not feasible: the only viable solution for small businesses is to simply stop using them. Running the risk of losing out on payments, having claims filed against you, and having your products be removed from your own store just isn’t worth the risk.

Thankfully, there are platforms which respect the laws of the countries their merchants sell in.

If you’re selling with ShopFactory, you can rest easy. We’re fully compliant, SEO optimized, and will allow you to upload infinite products.

If you’re currently selling on a platform like Amazon, don’t get caught out. Get started with ShopFactory today – risk free!

Lena Klein