Domestic photo processors allegedly charged higher photo processing fees for consumers that had produced their own digital passport photos, claiming the higher fees were the result of necessary adjustments, editing and production, in violation of the Fair Trade Law
Chinese Taipei
Domestic photo processors allegedly charged higher photo processing fees for consumers that had produced their own digital passport photos, claiming the higher fees were the result of necessary adjustments, editing and production, in violation of the Fair Trade Law
Key Words:
photo processors, digital passport photos
Reference:
Fair Trade Commission Decision of January 23, 2003 (the 585th Commissioners' Meeting)
Industry:
Photo Processing (9691)
Relevant Law:
Articles 14 of the Fair Trade Law
Summary:
1. In a letter, the Consumer's Foundation's Consumer Reports magazine informed the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) that the magazine had received a complaint from a member of the public alleging that domestic photo processors were raising their fee collection standards for digital photo processing whenever the processors found that consumers were producing their own passport photos. The foundation requested that the FTC look into the matter to determine whether such practices were in violation of relevant provisions of the law or whether said practices constituted concerted action or monopolistic acts.
2. The FTC's inquiry indicated that the domestic digital photo processing market
includes more than 4,000 ordinary photo processing shops as well as photo processing
counters within hypermarkets, Internet photo processing service providers and
numerous convenience stores that provide third party-processing services.
Furthermore, the most recent two years have witnessed a rapid development in
digital photography and digital photo processing, resulting in a steep and rapid
decline in digital photo processing costs, indicating that information in domestic
digital photo processing market were fully disclosed and the market was sufficiently
competitive. Additionally, FTC's inspections of 13 photo processing businesses
to observe actual market transaction conditions found that nine of the 13 businesses
did not set higher processing fees for the processing of customer-produced passport
photos; they charged the same processing fees for such photos as for ordinary
photographs.
Among the three businesses that did charge higher processing fees for customer-produced
passport photos, their fee collection standards were different while the remaining
business possessed no digital processing equipment and was able to perform only
third-party digital processing services. The businesses inspected all claimed
that relevant commercial associations had yet to issue any standards with regard
to the transaction price or trading terms concerning the processing of customer-produced
digital passport photos. Consequently, given the increasing number of service
providers in the market and the fact that actual market trading circumstances
indicated that the majority of businesses do not charge more for the processing
of customer-produced digital passport photos or refuse to process such photos,
it is difficult to treat the trading practices in the digital photo processing
market as a contravention of general market practices based on reasonable business
considerations and as involving market manipulation or monopolistic practices.
Thus, there is no specific evidence indicating that the commercial associations
or other relevant commercial group or business has violated the provisions of
Article 14 of the Fair Trade Law by engaging in concerted action.
3. In addition, given that there is no difference in the method and costs of digital photo processing due to differences in the content of the digital image files, in the event that the production and editing processes for digital photos are completed by the consumer, processing business are then responsible only for handling the actual photo processing and perform no services related to the photo quality, such as color adjustment. Actual market trading circumstances also indicated that a minority of photo processing businesses did not fully disclose the terms of transaction, fee collection standards and other important trading information to consumers in advance when processing customer-produced passport photos. Accordingly, to maintain the trading order and consumers' interest in this relevant market, the FTC sent a letter requesting that the relevant commercial associations notify its members that where no additional services such as editing or color adjustment have been provided during the processing of digital photos, additional fees may not be collected under any premise and that all pertinent transaction terms, fee collection standards and other important trading information must be fully disclosed to consumers in advance.
Appendix:
Fei Fu Color Photo Processing Co., Ltd.'s Uniform Invoice Number: 05640477
Tung Hu Photography Studio's Uniform Invoice Number: 08586933
Summarized by Hsu, Cho-Yuan; Supervised by Cheng, Chia-Ling