Fair Trade Commission Corrects Unfair Terms in Taxi Platform Agreements

In the future, if taxi call platforms such as Kakao Mobility go down due to Internet Data Center (IDC) failures, the operators will also bear responsibility.

On the 29th, the Fair Trade Commission announced that it had corrected unfair terms and conditions of six taxi call platform operators: Kakao Mobility, Wooty, T-money, VCNC, Konatus, and Jin Mobility.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

The six operators had regarded IDC failures and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks as force majeure events, exempting themselves from liability in such cases. The Fair Trade Commission pointed out that considering the contractual relationships and current technological standards, it is difficult to view IDC failures as beyond the operators' control, and that operators also have a responsibility to defend against DDoS attacks. Therefore, completely exempting operators from liability on the grounds of force majeure is problematic.

Clauses stating that unused coupons or points will be deleted when customers withdraw from the service or terminate their contracts were also identified as unfair terms. It is reasonable to refund coupons or points that customers have purchased.

Clauses limiting the scope of compensation that operators owe to customers to a certain amount, or exempting operators from liability beyond the conditions of their insurance policies, were judged to be unfair as they arbitrarily restrict compensation without clearly defining the operators' scope of responsibility. Provisions allowing platform operators to unilaterally terminate contracts for broad reasons were also pointed out as problematic.

The six operators voluntarily corrected the unfair terms during the Fair Trade Commission’s investigation. Kim Dong-myeong, head of the Commission’s Special Transactions Division for Terms and Conditions, stated, "According to the terms during the downtime incidents, the platforms had no responsibility at all, but from now on, responsibility will be recognized."