How will the new Consumer Protection Regulations work in practice?

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At the end of May I attended one of the WOM UK Espresso Briefings on the new Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations. There was an excellent presentation from Stephen Clarke, head of marketing and privacy law at law firm Osborne Clarke, who went through the details of the new law. There was also a rather less illuminating presentation from Marina Palumbo, legal director of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, who simply went through some of the best known case studies that most word of mouth practitioners would already know very well. Both presentations are available on the WOM UK website.

But the big questions about the CPRs remain as to how they will be interpreted by case law and how they will be enforced?

Ian Delaney, editor of New Media Knowledge (NMK), has an interesting post on his personal blog. Reading the post it looks very much like Carphone Warehouse, or one of its agencies, is engaging in unlawful activity by blogging without revealing their identity.

It looks like some Carphone Warehouse ‘fans’ have been commenting about how wonderful it is on Ian’s post about his negative customer service experience. All of the comments have Hotmail addresses, but come from the same IP address.

But here’s the rub, Just because it appears that Carphone Warehouse is guilty doesn’t mean it is. It genuinely could be some quite nutty Carphone Warehouse fan posting all three comments. But now Ian has blogged about it then the damage to the brand is done.

This raises interesting questions for online reputation managers such as the need to monitor for situations such as this and respond to them as appropriate.

It also illustrates the need for guidelines for employees (it is directors and senior managers who will go to prison) – guidelines will help prove a due diligence defence. You do want employees to engage in conversations, but in way that benefits them and you, not one that potentially damages you both.