Consumer issues which are now attracting attention
Part 1 : Trend in consumer issues and consumer's attitude / behavior
Chapter 1 : Results of information gathering and analysis on consumer accidents
Section 3 : Overview of consumer affairs consultations
Section 4 : Consumer issues which are now attracting attention
Consumer issues which are now attracting attention
- With consultations involving young people, the internet and beauty came to top.
- Consumer affairs consultations related to online games increased among those under 20 years of age.
- The number of consumer affairs consultations involving elderly people continued to fall since the previous year. Consultations involving elderly people accounted for about 30% of all consultations.
- As with the previous year, "Goods in general" stood out in the consultations, including spam emails and billing fraud. However, the number of such cases fell by half.
- Cases of "Other health food," including subscription, were on the increase. "Health-care & sanitary goods, etc.", including face masks, ranked in 2020.
- Among different sales/purchase patterns, the proportion of "mail order sales" increased. The proportions of "in-store purchases," "door-to-door sales" and "telemarketing sales" dropped.
- Consultations related to "internet shopping" increased. Among different product/service types, product-related consultations increased with many troubles such as undelivered goods and no contact opportunities (i.e. unable to contact business operators), in particular.
- Consumer affairs consultations regarding "subscription" in mail order sales continued to be on the increase. In 2020, they reached about 60,000, the largest number in history.
- Consumer affairs consultations that had some connection to social networking service (SNS) also continued to be on the increase.
* Main examples of consultation details are as follows.
- 1Examples of troubles triggered by SNS advertisements
- 2Examples of troubles triggered by SNS solicitations
- 3Troubles in private individual transactions with people met through SNS