The proliferation of electronic commerce using the Internet as a common communication medium has established a need for an effective dispute resolution mechanism when exchanges in electronic commerce are unsatisfactory to one or more the parties involved. The Internet is a convenient medium by which consumers and businesses can purchase a variety of goods and services. Since buyers and sellers meet online, convenience of selecting, ordering and payment is offset by the possibility of the transaction not occurring as planned and the difficulty in resolving any issues post-order. Issues could include corrupt traders or merchants, a failure to deliver the goods or services promised, a lack of quality in the goods or services which are delivered or other ways in which one of the two parties feels that the transaction did not occur as expected. The difficulty of resolving an issue once it occurs is compounded by the fact the parties are in different locations and therefore cannot show one another visually what may be the issue, or cannot discuss face to face other alternatives that they may lead to mutual satisfaction. All these factors also contribute to a general lack of trust between parties. Hence the lack of adequate system lead to leave the parties highly dissatisfied with the electronic commerce experience with a common outcome of not participating as much or at all due to the risks or due to an incidence of real or perceived dispute.
What can SS-EQUITY (E-Com Dispute Resolution) do to resolve e-commerce disputes?
Finding the traditional dispute resolution processes like court litigation and traditional ADR do not provide an effective solution and so far not effective in dealing with cross-border or cross-state or often times cross-locality transactions that may occur in electronic commerce and further traditional ADR are generally slow and very procedural comparatively.
As such SS-EQUITY (E-Commerce) groomed up with an ODR system applies the techniques beyond the traditional dispute resolution mechanisms, such as automated complaint handling, automated direct negotiation between the parties, automated agreement processes, facilitating case handling, facilitated mediation, specialized mediation processes and specific marketplace processes could able to meet the challenges posed by the present trend of e-commerce disputes. Techniques are described for handling disputes online. The
techniques particularly relate to low-volume as well as high-volume dispute handling, and integration with an online marketplace or general online selling. The techniques can handle even a very high volume of concurrent disputes cost effectively, and provide for the central management of a large and geographically distributed group of dispute resolution specialists that assist
with online dispute resolution. The techniques address needs arising through the recent growth of global online market places and online selling.
Commitments
Soft Settle facilitates the parties with the techniques aiming at faster settlement with transparency in the solutions. Further SS-Equity (ECDR) incorporated in the platform Soft Settle promotes effortless experiences in resolving e-commerce disputes.
Features
- A method is technically integrated to enable a complainant to automatically design a dispute resolution process from a plurality of component process.
- Technical integration of a method to receive characterization information
- Technical integration of a method to enable access to deliberation information associated with a second dispute to facilitate resolution of first dispute.
- Assisting a review of a plurality of component processes that respectively utilized to facilitate the resolution of a dispute.
- Independent review feedback is incorporated
- The settlement process can be synchronous or asynchronous as according to the convenience of the parties.
- Repeated e-Negotiation till a resolution is found
- An escalated mode with a neutral assisting the disputants in finding a solution (software built) where the neutral’s decision in respect of disputes would be final.
- As an appeal parties can again approach an appellate tribunal in a different platform Mediator Affair integrated in www.odrsupport.com.
- An automatic Agreement would be generated on settlement in all situations referred above after the parties approving the Agreement Framework.