Empowering Malaysian Consumers through Legislation: Does ‘small print’ in contract influence consumer behaviour and affect the quality of life?

Abstract

Consumers faced with contract do not know what 'small print' contains or understand its effect. Exclusion clauses may deprive a consumer of specific rights in which he deserves protection. The Consumer Protection Act 1999 in Malaysia, allows the consumers to identify between procedural unfairness and substantive unfairness. However, Consumer Protection Act 1999 does not adequately protect consumer. By applying the content analysis research method, this paper reviews the legislative and judicial intervention on unfair terms in consumer contracts. This paper advocates that Malaysia should establish a specific framework on consumer law protection against unfair terms in consumer contracts.Keywords: Exclusion clauses; unfair terms; consumer contracts; judicial-legislative interventioneISSN: 2398-4287 © 2018. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.https://doi.org/10.21834/e-bpj.v3i9.1483