The current legislation is not strict about which elements should be mandatory regarding an internet page of the providers that have activities with electronic e-commerce, but the “Terms & Conditions” section must not miss from your online business website, because it can be used to inform your users regarding your products/services, also to protect you from possible misuse by customers.

However, there is no standard model to be used by all e-commerce providers, each having to adapt this section to the mandatory legal provisions and to the activity they carry out.
In accordance with Law 365/2002 on electronic commerce (republished) I must be able to provide customers permanently, free of charge and in a clear and visible form inside the web pages with some information:

• The name or legal description of the service provider
• The address or headquarters of your service provider, also the necessary information to contact him directly and effectively
• The registration number in the trade register and the fiscal registration code
• The tariffs related to the services offered, specifying the exemption, inclusion or non-inclusion of value added tax, as well as its amount
• The inclusion or non-inclusion in the price of the delivery costs, as well as their value, if applicable.

This information must be made available to the public regardless of the area of ​​activity of your business. There are also specific requirements for professions regulated by law (eg liberal professions) or for which prior authorization is required. They consist, in principle, in the display of the professional title held and of the professional body which granted it for the first category, or of the authorization and the authority which ordered the authorization for the second category.

In addition to the data required by law, the "Terms & Conditions" section should set out the parameters in which the relationship between the supplier and customers takes place, in order to protect you from the abuses of users of your e-commerce page, as well as to limit your liability in the case of its improper use or of the products / services you sell.

Without attempting to propose an exhaustive list, below are some of the elements that I think the terms and conditions section of your business should include:

• Defining the notions used
• Information about the products / services offered
• Rights and obligations of the contracting parties

This sub-section can be quite extensive, given that you are directly interested in regulating in detail how the relationship between you and customers, from the offer on the site to the actual delivery of products / services. Also in this section you can assign the right to modify the data on the site or its content without any prior notice to users, the right to publish / delete certain comments or accounts of users, but also to impose a series of obligations (e.g.: not to provide false information, not to alienate the account, not to use the services improperly, etc.).

Copyrights
 

The copyrights generally protected in the terms and conditions section are logos, design, business name, product name, site content, but the rights to user comments about your products / services (which, although intellectual property of users, can also be used by your business for promotional purposes).

Billing, payments and delivery policy

Here you can include the method of payment and invoicing, you can include the obligation of the user to provide correct data for invoicing and delivery and you can refer to the law on electronic commerce.

Cookies policy

You must provide permanent, clear information in a language accessible to the user regarding the purpose of processing the information by third parties.

Personal data / Privacy policy

It must contain the purpose for which you request, store and process personal data. As you ask customers to fill in their personal data in the registration form on the site, you must obtain an authorization from the National Authority for the Supervision of Personal Data Processing. The form for obtaining the authorization to process such data can be completed online here: http://www.dataprotection.ro/?page=formulare&lang=ro.

The subject of personal data protection is a broad one, and, considering the date of May 25, 2018, the date on which the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will enter into force, this subject must be addressed in detail in a future article.

Dispute resolution

You must first specify the applicable law; in the case of Romanian suppliers operating in the country, the applicable law is Romanian law. Disputes can be settled amicably, through mediation or through the competent courts. SOL (the online dispute resolution platform) has also been operating since 2016, and in order to avoid fines from ANPC, it is necessary to refer to this online dispute resolution platform resulting from online trading, the platform You can find it here: https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr/main/index.cfm?event=main.home.show&lng=EN.

Also in this section you can include the link to ANPC http://www.anpc.gov.ro/ and the reference to the user's right to inform this authority about any dissatisfaction with your products / services.
• Warranties and return policy
You must clearly specify the conditions for granting / losing the guarantee for the categories of products / services you offer. You must also refer to the provisions of GEO 34/2014 on consumer rights governing the possibility of the customer to return the products within 14 days, without motivating in any way this decision.
• Limitation of supplier liability
There are cases where the provider may limit its liability (eg in case of alienation of password, user account, provision of incorrect or incomplete information, in case of use of products / services for a purpose other than that for which they were designed, etc.).
Below you will find some examples of "Terms & Conditions" sections of large companies:
https://www.google.com/intl/ro_ro/policies/terms/regional.html
https://pepsi.ro/assets/docs/termeni.pdf
https://www.orange.ro/termeni-si-conditii/
https://www.booking.com/content/terms.ro.html

Although the above examples contain such sections designed by armies of competent lawyers based on the legislation in force, but also based on the experience gained in customer relations over time, I do not advise you to copy word for word the terms and conditions them. Firstly, this is not recommended because you are violating the provisions of copyright law (and large companies are very careful when it comes to such violations) and secondly because you need terms and conditions that are best suited to the specifics of your business and the existing legal provisions in the field in which you carry out your activity.

By Ioana Pasniciuc