Court of Justice: order button on e-commerce website must clearly convey obligation to pay
Whenever you buy or book something online, the order button must clearly convey that you will be under an obligation to pay, e.g. with the words ‘Buy now’ or ‘Order with obligation to pay’. Recently, the Court of Justice of the European Union has issued a ruling on the importance of the text on the order button.
Obligation to pay or not
The Court's ruling concerned the case of a German consumer who had used the Booking.com website to look for a hotel. Through Booking.com, he found a hotel where he ended up booking four double rooms. He booked the rooms as follows:
- The consumer clicked on the ‘I’ll reserve’ button
- The consumer filled in their personal details
- The consumer clicked on the ‘Complete booking’ button
In the end, the consumer never showed up to the hotel, after which he Was charged a € 2240 cancellation fee. The consumer did not intend to pay this fee, arguing that he had never been told clearly that he was entering into a payment obligation. The hotel disagreed.
Clear order button
The order button is the final button in the ordering process that you have to click to finalise your purchase or booking. According to European rules, consumers must clearly understand that you are entering an obligation to pay as soon as you click the order button, making the text on the button particularly important. But how important are the words appearing on the order button?
Court's ruling
The Court of Justice of the European Union recently ruled that the words appearing on the order button are important: they have to be clear and the consumer must clearly understand that they are under an obligation to pay as soon as they click on the order button.
So are there any specific national rules in EU countries that set requirements for order buttons and the text on them? According to the Court, sellers are free to choose which words appear on the order button, provided that they are clear.
The Court also added that it is up to national courts to decide whether words like ‘book’ are sufficiently clear. If the judge finds that the words on the order button are not clear enough, the purchase agreement will not hold up and you will not have to pay.
Find out more
You can read the full ruling in case C 249/21 Fuhrmann-2-GmbH on the Infocuria website (Case Law of the Court of Justice).