Do online stores in Peru need a complaints book?

What changed on 11 November 2025

Until that date, the complaints-book regulation applied to “los proveedores que desarrollen sus actividades económicas en establecimientos comerciales abiertos al público.” A shop that only sold online could argue it was outside.

Ley 32495 ended the argument by rewriting two articles of the Consumer Protection and Defence Code:

• Article 150: “Los establecimientos comerciales, así como toda plataforma digital de comercio electrónico, deben contar con un libro de reclamaciones, en forma física o virtual.”
• Article 151: digital platforms “exhiben permanentemente en un lugar visible y fácilmente accesible el enlace al libro de reclamaciones.”

In a physical shop, the notice on the wall. In an online store, the link. That is the equivalence.

What an online store has to do

Going by the statute, three things:

1. Have the book, normally in virtual form.
2. Show the link permanently, visibly and in an easily accessible place. Not behind a login, not only inside the checkout flow.
3. Answer every reclamo and queja within fifteen business days, no extension, like any other establishment.

The virtual book was already allowed by article 4 of the 2011 regulation, with a condition that still stands: the system must let the consumer “imprima gratuitamente una copia de su Hoja de Reclamación virtual.” Without a free copy, a virtual book does not comply.

What is still missing: the implementing decree

Ley 32495 has a single Final Complementary Provision. It gives the Executive thirty calendar days to adapt the complaints-book regulation (DS 011-2011-PCM) to the new law.

We found no such decree published. We looked, and it is not there. That means there is currently no written rule on, for instance, exactly where the link must sit, what the virtual sheet in an app should look like, or how the duty applies to a marketplace where third parties sell. What governs is the text of the law and the general regulation, unadapted.

We say so because it is the honest position. If someone quotes you detailed rules for online stores “under the regulation,” ask which one.

And the fines

Indecopi’s reference scale (Table 4 of DS 032-2021-PCM) dates from 2021, before Ley 32495, and speaks of establishments. Having no book is breach type A; a book that is not accessible is type B. A missing or hidden link falling into those boxes is the reasonable reading, but the table does not say it in those words. We have not been able to confirm the table on El Peruano.

If you are buying from an online store

Look for the link before you buy. That it exists and is in plain sight is a sign the store knows its obligations. If it does not exist, that does not mean you cannot complain: it means you have an extra breach to take to Indecopi.