ODR is mandatory if, pursuant to the agreement between the provider and the consumer, the consumer is required to pursue the exclusive remedy of arbitration or other forms of ODR. ODR is binding if the parties agree that any result or decision that comes out of the proceedings is legally binding and enforceable on them – that is, the result affects the rights and obligations between the parties. ODR’s transparency depends on whether all the procedural steps are disclosed or known to the parties, the arbiter or mediator discloses any possible conflict of interest or warrants that no such conflict of interest exists, the decisions are published or made available to the public, and the parties are informed of the legal and factual bases on which a decision or result is founded on.

ODR is generally helpful for consumer as long as the following basic rights are preserved: (i) the consumer’s due process rights (right to be heard, right to a fair and impartial hearing of his or her case); (ii) the proceedings are neither too short or too long; (iii) the requirement of undertaking ODR is not unconscionable; or (iv) the ODR process does not effectively deny the consumer of the right to redress and access to courts.

This post was originally written for a class in Information Technology Law when I was an LLM student at the University of Edinburgh.

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