A majority of people support the measure allowing consumers to open parcels to inspect them before making cash-on-delivery payments, according to a survey by the National Institute of Development Administration, or Nida Poll.
The poll was conducted on July 9-11 by telephone interviews with 1,310 people aged over 18 of various levels of education, occupations and incomes throughout the country.
Asked about their thoughts on the “Dee-Delivery” rule recently issued by the Office of the Consumer Protection Board to help protect cash-on-delivery (COD) customers, 70.45% respondents said they definitely agreed, 24.46% moderately agreed, 4.00% moderately disagreed, 0.87% definitely disagreed and 0.22% did not know or were not interested.
Of total respondents, 70.53% had experience of shopping online while the remaining 29.47% had never made online purchases.
Multiple-choice questions were then put to the 70.53% or 924 respondents with experience of online shopping about their opinions on the Dee-Delivery measure, and their answers varied as follows:
-84.20% said the policy protects online shoppers if the product does not match the advertised features.
-76.19% it protects consumers from fraudsters
-60.28% it helps consumer to get their money back
-48.70% it reduces complaints/conflicts among buyers, riders and sellers
-34.20% it protects riders because they don’t have to be responsible for the merchandise in the parcel that is opened
-20.02% riders would waste time waiting for buyers to inspect products
-17.21% the measure would push goods delivery fees higher
-16.77% the measure would increase the price of COD goods
-11.36% not fair to sellers because they face a risk of COD buyers rejecting payments
-10.39% riders/delivery firms have to wait five days before they can close an order
-10.06% not fair to sellers because they need to wait five days before receiving money
-8.98% the new rule may reduce the purchases of COD goods
-6.60% there are no penalties in case buyer or seller breaches a contract
-0.22% disagreed with the Dee-Delivery rule
-0.22% did not know or were not interested.