The Supreme Court has ruled that the order button on Bol.com was not clear enough. Buttons with text such as "order," "place order" or "complete order" do not make it clear enough that the consumer is making a payment commitment.
Purchases made via such buttons can consequently be reversed. This may have major consequences for webshops and collection agencies. In a response, Bol.com announced that it will have already changed the order button to "order and pay" by 2022.
The Supreme Court ruled on this in response to a customer who had placed an order on Bol.com by clicking on the "place order" button. In doing so, he chose to pay afterwards without fulfilling the payment obligation. The Supreme Court referred to European rules that require an order button to indicate very clearly that it also involves an obligation to pay. The text "place order" is not enough, because many people do not immediately understand that they have to pay when they click that button.
"It is now clear that if an order button is not clear enough, the consumer can have the purchase undone through the courts," said IT lawyer Henk Dekker. According to him, there are limits to this: "I can imagine that a judge will not always find it reasonable to completely reverse a purchase, but only a part of it. For example, if the product has already been used by the consumer for a very long time and only takes action as a result of this ruling."
