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How to make a complaint about a UK webtrader If you have a complaint about a UK webtrader we may be able to help you. This is not limited to WebTraderUK member companies. We mediate disputes between UK retailers as long as their service is within our remit and they are based online, are not fraudulent and are contactable by email. Please check the following three checklists before contacting us. 1. Before contacting us, please make sure you have checked the following. a. Have you notified the webtrader about your complaint and allowed a reasonable time for a response? If not, please contact the webtrader first. If you are not satisfied with the webtrader’s response, we will seek to mediate on your behalf. b. Does the company subscribe to a recognised code of practice? If so, have you contacted the organisation which issues the code? They will have their own mediation procedures. If not, please access the code owner’s website to obtain details of their particular code of practice, and their complaints handling mechanism. If you have done both of these things and are still dissatisfied, please contact us, and include both the webtrader’s and code owner’s response. 2. We receive several common queries with which we are unable to help. Before contacting us about a complaint, please check that you can answer “yes” to the following questions. a. Is the webtrader about whom you are registering a complaint based in the UK? We can only mediate with UK registered firms. There may be an alternative organisation in the country in question which can help you. If the company is based in the USA, please contact The Council of Better Business Bureaus at www.crossborderadr.org b. Is your complaint about an online company, and not an offline (or ‘bricks and mortar’) company? We seek to mediate with online businesses only. For complaints about offline companies, we suggest you contact your local trading standards office. The council offices in the area where the company is based should be able to provide details. c. Does the webtrader have a valid email address to contact them? We only contact webtraders by email as this provides a record of correspondence in the event of disputes. We do not maintain records of all UK verifiable webtraders so will not be able to contact a business if you cannot provide a valid email address. We cannot mediate where a webtrader’s only contact is via an online form. If you have a valid email address but the firm has failed to respond to you, we may still be able to help you. d. Is the complaint of a recent nature? If your complaint is about a transaction that occurred more than three months ago, it is unlikely the webtrader will agree to act on the complaint. It is also possible that the webtrader will no longer have a record of your transaction. In this case, we are unable to help you 3. We get several common queries with which we are unable to help. Please check that you can answer “no” to the following questions. a. Are you enquiring about whether a webtrader’s service is genuine? WebTraderUK does not hold information on companies apart from its own members who are listed on our website. However, we can offer the following advice: Please see if the webtrader is on WebTraderUK’s list of members. Look at www.fraudwatchinternational.com which contains names of known fraudulent companies. Look up the webtrader’s name on a search engine to see if any complaints or reviews about the business can be found. b. Is your complaint about a consumer rather than a company? We can only mediate between consumers and businesses. For example, if your complaint is about a consumer who has sold you an item on an auction site, we will be unable to help. We are also unable to mediate with complaints about auction sites (such as eBay), payment sites (such as Paypal) and escrow services. c. Is your complaint about online gaming or gambling? This is outside our remit and we suggest you contact your local trading standards officer. d. Are you complaining about a scam? We are not able to offer legal assistance in prosecuting fraudulent activity. If you are in the USA, we suggest you contact the Federal Trade Commission in Washington DC at www.ftc.gov. e. Are you informing us about a scam or bad experience that does not require action? We do not publish warnings about or reviews of individual firms. We suggest you visit www.reviewcentre.com where you can submit your review of a firm. Read the checklists? If, after reading the checklist, you think we can help you, please fill out our complaint form. Please note that we will not reply to complaints of a nature that this page states are outside our remit.