Consumer Rights

Consumer rights, the consumer rights cover thing like…

1. The right to be informed about the quality, quantity, price, etc of goods or services.

2. The right to be protected against the marketing of hazardous goods and services.

3. The right to be assured, wherever possible, access to a variety of goods and services at competitive prices.

4. The right to seek redressed against unfair trade practices or restrictive trade practices or unscrupulous exploitation of consumers, etc

All these rights and more are protected under various laws in India like Consumer Protection Act, 1986, Standard of Weight & Measures Act, 1976, Competition Act, 2002, The Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, 1954. Among these, the Consumer Protection Act provides for the better protection of the interests of the consumers and for that purpose provides for establishment of consumer forums at different levels.

Generally, people have misconception about consumer courts that the cases result in undue delay, which certainly holds good for the civil and criminal courts but not for courts of small causes like consumer courts. Even by a recent amendment, provision has been included under Consumer Protection Act… that requires the forums need to decide the case in maximum of 3 to 5 months, wherever possible.

Certainly, the consumer Forums provide a speedy and effective remedy at almost no cost. Further, huge compensation is awarded in certain cases.

Cases:

Lets look into the kind of complaints that are entertained by the consumer forums:

1. Defect in goods or deficiency in services,

2. Misleading Advertisements, like SIFY Broad advertises Unlimited Packages but with some attached conditions which lead to reduction in validity, no way the package can be called Unlimited.

3. False Representations, generally marketing persons make some oral statements as to conditions, warranties, etc to convince the buyer, which don’t exist. These kinds of cases have been reported on a large case against Aqua guard.

4. Wrong Billing, like in a recent case, Hutch was ordered to pay Rs 30,000/- to a customer, who sent 30 SMS though none reached the destination but was charged Rs 45/- in the bill.

5. Excess Charging, that means charging in excess of what has been specified on the goods or fixed under any law. This normally happens at places like Cinema halls, Airports, where they will charge you in excess of what has been printed. Though in such cases, you may feel only Rs. 10-20 are charged in excess, but compensation up to Rs 10,000 have been awarded. This happened in case against PVR.

6. The offering of gifts, prizes or other items with the intention of not providing them or creating impression that something is being given or offered free of charge when it is fully or partly covered by the amount charged in the transaction as a whole.

Procedure… it is quite simple.

1. Firstly, pre-requisite for filing the case is that you need to have the receipt for the transaction, as no case can be filed, where no consideration is involved.
2. The need to locate the Consumer Forum, under whose jurisdiction, the defendant resides or carries on business. Generally, one consumer forum is located in every district. Like in Delhi…
3. The complaint need to be filed in quadruplicate on plain paper, which must include the transaction details, grievance, attempts made to set things right & Response from the opposite party. Lastly, compensation claimed and other relief claimed.
4. After a little review by the magistrate, the notices are issued to the opposite parties by the court, to appear and file counter reply.
5. Then hearings take place in the normal course and case is decided within a period of 4-5 months. At a later stage of the case, the same complaint has to be reproduced in the form of Affidavit.

I feel, the big business houses tend to indulge in Unfair Trade Practices, as in the wake of fierce competition, as this is the only way in which they can increase their profits, what they refer to as their marketing strategies, in reality are nothing but Unfair Trade practices, which include making of false statements, misleading advertisements, etc.

As more cases of Fraud are being reported against big companies like Reliance Infocomm, SIFY BroadBand, etc. It’s really HIGH time that more and more consumers’ knock at the doors of Consumer Courts!!!

- Ankur Raheja.com, All rights reserved