Law firm puts the brakes on Yanolja’s terms and conditions of ‘no refunds after 10 minutes of reservation’… Two places, including “I hope this will be an opportunity to balance consumer protection and corporate autonomy”

“As much as we respect corporate autonomy, I hope that consumer rights will also be protected. I hope that starting with this ruling, the two values ​​will find a balance.” On the 18th, Mr. A, an employee of Daeryun Law Firm, and lawyer Da-eun Kim said this.

The Seoul Central District Court recently ruled that the terms and conditions of the accommodation platform Nol Universe (Yanolja), which stipulates that refunds cannot be made if a reservation is made more than 10 minutes ago, are unfair and therefore invalid. Mr. A was the plaintiff, and Attorney Kim acted as his representative and brought out this ruling.

The story is like this. Mr. A, who was in charge of business trips in Daeryun, reserved accommodation through Yanolja. However, the schedule was changed and I announced my intention to cancel my reservation two hours later, but Yanolja informed me that a refund was not possible. The reason was that if you do not cancel within 10 minutes after completing the reservation, a cancellation fee equivalent to 100% of the reservation deposit will be charged according to the regulations.

Accordingly, Daeryun decided to file a lawsuit to return the unfair profits. This is to raise issues about terms and conditions that infringe consumer rights and receive legal judgment. The Electronic Commerce Act guarantees consumers a 7-day cancellation period, but some industries, such as lodging and aviation, customarily view exceptions without making specific judgments for each case, so it is believed that only consumers are bearing the brunt of the damage.

During the lawsuit, Yanolja argued that mail order brokers were not subject to the relevant provisions of the Electronic Commerce Act and therefore were not responsible for refunding fees. However, Attorney Kim countered that Yanolja went beyond being an intermediary and actually engaged in active sales activities as a seller.

To prove this, Attorney Kim went through the process of booking and canceling products from Yanolja several times. At the same time, if you reserve a room at the published rate, you can cancel without a fee until the actual stay, but we confirmed that a full refund is not possible for the product in question, even though the difference is less than 20,000 won than the published rate. Based on this, it was emphasized in the trial that it was significantly unreasonable in light of general knowledge.

As a result of the trial, the court ruled that Yanolja was a mail order seller or a ‘mail order intermediary who is a mail order seller.’ In addition, the refund policy was deemed invalid as it was unfavorable to the customer and constituted an unfair term, and the full refund was ordered to be paid to Mr. A. Daeryun's side says that if only the intermediary status is recognized, as in existing precedents, it will result in evading responsibility for various business activities, and it appears that the court sympathized with the awareness of the problem regarding this unreasonable structure.

Attorney Kim said, "This ruling does not mean that all terms and conditions that become non-refundable after a certain period of time are considered invalid. However, the prevailing perception was that even if a problem was raised with similar terms and conditions, the likelihood of success was low, and this ruling was an opportunity to confirm the possibility of redress for consumers' rights."

Daeryun plans to file a class action lawsuit on behalf of consumers who have suffered damage due to Yanolja's terms and conditions. Currently, criminal complaints, accusations, and civil lawsuits are being filed on behalf of victims regarding the SKT personal information leak.

Reporter Jeong Cheol-wook

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Seoul Newspaper - Law firm puts the brakes on Yanolja's terms and conditions of 'no refunds after 10 minutes of reservation'... “I hope this becomes an opportunity to balance consumer protection and corporate autonomy” (Shortcut)
Money S - 'Yanolja refund' win case Attorney Kim Da-eun "I wanted to find 'rights' more than money" (Go)