Legal Approaches to Unfair Consumer Terms in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand

In a global economy, the advancement in new technologies and the liberalisation of trade present challenges to the consumer protection regime of every jurisdiction. The survival of any regime of consumer protection law now depends on how it caters for ways and means to correct the inequalities in the global market. Achieving a fair balance between the needs of market providers and the consumers is indeed a major challenge to law makers. In the course of remedying market failure, one of the most important developments in the area of consumer protection is the evolution of exclusion clauses. The increasing use of standard form contracts and the use of such clauses have now become a predominant feature of many consumer contracts. The growth of welfarism within the law of contract and consumer law has encouraged the courts and legislature to intervene to limit the autonomy of contracting parties, where significant inequalities of bargaining power are reflected in contractual terms. By applying the content analysis research method, this article aims at exploring the judicial and legislative intervention on unfair terms in Malaysia and comparing the legislative provisions on unfair terms in the Malaysian Consumer Protection Act 1999 with the Indonesian and the Thai legal frameworks.