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February 04, 2009 14:57 PM

More Consumers 'Flexing' Their Muscles

By Melati Mohd Ariff

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 4 (Bernama) - News on unscrupulous traders resorting to various tricks and gimmicks as well as gifts and other 'sweeteners' to fleece unsuspecting consumers is nothing new.

Despite the media highlighting these scams and ploys, many consumers were still fleeced into buying goods that they really did not need or that at inflated price.

People should be willing to exercise their rights as consumers and there are several channels that they could submit their complaints through.

Among these are the National Consumer Complaints Centre (NCCC), Consumer Claims Tribunal and the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry.

MORE COMPLAINTS

According to the NCCC, there were 33 per cent more complaints, at 24,873 for 2007 as compared to 18,345 the year before.

The highest number of complaints for 2007 was against housing developers at 2,076 followed by direct selling (1,933), private high education institutions (1,856), management organisations (1,739), telecommunications (1,721), inferior quality products (1,519), cheap sale (1,410), public transport (1,254), financial institutions (1,044) and hypermarkets (975).

On the higher number of complaints, NCCC Chief Executive Muhammad Sha'ani Abdullah said this was due to the consumers' awareness over their rights over the dissatisfaction in the price and quality of goods and services.

"Despite the lack of publicity on the NCCC, the majority of consumers contacted the NCCC to air their complaints after getting information on the Internet," he told Bernama here recently.

He said the trend is expected to pick up.

"Judging on the number of statistics for 2008 which is still being compiled as of October for that year, the number of complaints is 20 per cent higher for the same period in 2007," he said, adding that the report for 2008 is expected to be ready by end of March.

He said the NCCC would also boost its efficiency to shorten the time taken to act on each of the complaints to about five days.

For this, the information communication technology (ICT) for the NCCC personnel handling the complaints would be improved apart from being provided the exposure on the legal points relevant to the issues, he said.

OTHER COMPLAINTS

For the Consumer Complaints Tribunal, the highest number of complaints the agency received for 2008 was that on the 'scratch-and-win' and SMS scams that totalled 1,288 out of 7,440 cases.

Tribunal Chairman Rungit Singh, quoted in recent news reports, said most of the companies involved in the scratch-and-win scam deployed strategies that confused the public.

He said the companies set aside purportedly lucrative prizes to lure people to participate in their scams.

Other complaints received by the tribunal were on purchases of cars (412), handphones (336), tourism (327), time-sharing packages (241), workshops (223), high education institutions (85) as well as haj and umrah packages (82).

E-COMPLAINT

For the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry, the 'e-Complain' has been available on the ministry's website since June 14, 2004.

Via this mechanism, consumers could file their complaints direct to the ministry and they could contact the ministry if there is no respond within three days.

The ministry's Consumer Affairs Division Director Dr Mohd Mokhtar Tahar, said as of Dec 16, 2008, there were 10,385 complaints as compared to 8,879 in 2007 and 6,350 the year before.

"The increase shows that consumers in the country are now more aware and willing to exercise their rights. They also know where to file their complaints," he said.

AWARENESS

The rise in consumer awareness is definitely going to have an impact among the traders and producers of local goods.

As Muhammad Sha'ani put it, this has made the traders and producers be more responsible when offering their products and services.

"They (traders) would be more responsible with what they offer in advertisements and promotions," he said.

This means the traders would improve their attitude that translates into better-quality goods and services.

According to Muhammad Sha'ani this could prompted the traders and producers to set up their own channel to deal with complaints in relation to their goods and services.

-- BERNAMA