Significant number of paid mobile app users reported that they had experienced consumer complaints and damages yet had difficulties in obtaining compensation.

In Dec., 2010, the Korea Consumer Agency (President: Kim Young-seen, www.kca.go.kr) conducted a survey targeting 500 smart phone users who had experience in purchasing paid apps. According to the Agency, the survey found that 48.2% of the respondents had suffered consumer complaints and damages.   

By complaint type, ‘poor quality of the application’ topped the list with 48.6%, followed by ‘misleading and deceptive application product features, labeling, and ads (44.0%)’ and ‘failure to download the application properly or operation failure (40.4%)’. 

However, only 29.4% of the respondents reported that they had lodged a complaint or claimed compensation to the business. When being asked why they failed to put in a claim for compensation, the respondents stated reasons as follows: ‘the damage was too small (44.2%)’; ‘they were not aware of contract terms and standards for compensation (39.0%)’; ‘they failed to make an easy access to the business, i.e. phone call (36.4%)’; and ‘they failed to prove their damage (33.8%)’. 

At present, there is no standard in place for consumer damage for paid mobile application. Application store operators compensate users for damage based on a refund clause of ‘Terms of Use’ or their own guidelines. In addition, consumer damage due to mobile phone apps is believed to grow drastically in the future. Against this backdrop, the Korea Consumer Agency is going to draft consumer damage prevention and rational compensation standard for mobile phone application and make a recommendation to relevant government agencies.

Meanwhile, the survey revealed that the most downloaded paid mobile application category was ‘Game (67.3%)’, ‘Music (43.4%)’, and ‘Video (30.1%)’ and about W10,269 per month was spent on average for purchasing paid mobile application.