A ampliação do direito de arrependimento como medida protetiva ao consumidor na perspectiva contemporânea da sociedade de consumo

Abstract

The right to withdraw from a consumer contract is regulated by the article 49 of the Brazilian Consumer Protection Code (Código de Defesa do Consumidor – CDC). But the CDC retrenches this right only to distance or door-to-door contracts. This clause was stated in the 1990’, when consumer relations were held in a completely different environment, especially considering the increasing globalization and the universalization of the access to the Internet, which influenced considerably the consumer culture. The use of the Internet for consumer purposes is not limited to advertisement and purchases of goods sold online, it is responsible for propagating a way of life, based on consumerism, feeding the material desires of the consuming society. With that, we can observe a growing social-economic phenomenon of consumerism, encouraged by the fast-growing development of technology, information and the facilitation of access to credit, in which goods are valued by its possibility to meet instant desires, at the cost of the consumer’s conscious reflection, leading to impulsive choices and often to regrets, over indebtedness and other economic losses. In this conjuncture, and considering the principles of consumer protection justified by the acknowledgment of the vulnerability of consumers, as the fundamental reason for the endorsement of the right to withdraw, we argue in this paper the need to give consumers a cooling-off period by extending the mandatory right to withdraw to purchases that take place in the commercial establishments. For so, it was used the deductive method, with premises leading to a logical conclusion. It was used bibliographic sources such as national and foreign scientific works, consumer behavioral studies, sociological analysis, research data and consumer law doctrine.