Customer First...to be thrown under the bus

Vimal Singh, a senior doctor with Uttar Pradesh government, purchased a Maruti Vitara Brezza (UP 32 JE 2215) last September with zero-debt insurance policy from the Oriental Insurance.

Months later, on March 14, his car met with an accident and got badly damaged. It was moved to the workshop. The assessor advised him to get a claim in which a part of the car's pillar would be cut and welded. He objected since his car's zero-debt insurance cover allows for the damaged part to be replaced rather than fixed. Besides, doing so would weaken the structure, and pose a risk to life.

Singh knocked the doors of the insurer and the automaker, but in vain. He even went to the district consumer body, but was put off by a backlog of unheard cases running into thousands. Singh was left by himself, annoyed, and feeling shortchanged.

Many of us have felt like that as buyers, left without an avenue to redress our grievances. Evidently, consumer is seldom first, despite all the sloganeering. Even after a national campaign like Jago Grahak Jago, the government's efforts to put in place a mechanism to protect consumers from exploitation has also not yielded results.

The Consumer Protection Bill introduced in Lok Sabha on January 5, 2018, to replace the three-decade-old Consumer Protection Act, 1986, took a decade to be drafted. In 2015, the government introduced a bill to replace the 1986 Act but it did not account the rapid change in consumer markets, practices such as misleading advertisements, and online modes of transaction. It was referred to a Standing Committee, which recommended several changes to it. Ultimately, the bill was withdrawn and replaced with the Consumer Protection Bill, 2018 which is still pending.

Despite lawmakers, like business houses, claiming "customer satisfaction is of utmost importance", call centres across India keep ringing, the courts are overburdened with plaints, and most consumers are left to fend for themselves.

Worse, the regulatory bodies seem to be working more for business houses rather than consumers. And corporate representatives have even started threatening and assaulting customers. Is there any mechanism to redress the consumers 'problems?

No, say consumers.

There are crores of citizens who would empathise with Vimal Singh, or have suffered a worse ordeal. Like Delhi police official Anup Kalia. He bought a Samsung fridge last year, but it came with a slightly broken door. When Kalia approached the court last year, he was threatened with a defamation case by the firm's employees, he said. The company sent a battery of lawyers to intimidate him each time he reached consumer court. When he did not knuckle under pressure, the company begged for an out-of-court settlement. Kalia was exhausted with his seven-month fight in court. "Visiting court each time was affecting my assignments. Forget compensation, I agreed when they decided to give even a minuscule value of the refrigerator," he said. 

Enough mechanisms: Govt

The government claims it has set up enough mechanisms to redress consumers' problems, but their effectiveness remains to be seen. The mandate of the Department of Consumer Affairs, under the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, is consumer advocacy. Its job is to enable consumers to make informed choices, ensure fair deals and consistency in purchase, and facilitate timely and effective redress of disputes.

The department's Consumer Protection Unit has undertaken various schemes to improve functioning of consumer for a, such as computerisation and setting up state consumer helplines. But the department is strapped for funds, sources said, and should approach the Ministry of Finance for a budget enhancement to implement the policies.

"The department should also ensure that administrative and legal mechanisms are within easy reach of consumers as early as possible," the sources said.

The consumer fora established under the Consumer Protection Act, 1986, are reeling under several issues, said sources.

"Problems are faced during implementation of schemes for strengthening consumer fora and state consumer helplines. Here, release of funds are dependent on the proposals from state. Many a time, the state fails to submit proposals to the Centre," sources said.

The National Consumer Helpline (NCH), set up in 2004 under the Centre for Consumer Studies at the Indian Institute of Public Administration, is the core of the grievance redress mechanism. It does not work through call centres alone. It has partnered with 373 companies that respond online to resolve complaints in a 'convergence mechanism'. It also pursues the complaints with the convergence companies, takes feedback from complainants, does research and analysis and provides training.

Between April 2015 and January 2018, it received 8,50,430 calls through which consumers were guided about their rights, but business houses were not penalised in these cases. The Department of Consumer Affairs officials said they disposed of the cases orally.

"This is an out-of-the-court, pre-litigation system. Here, we do not hand out punishment, which is the court's responsibility. If the company is not able to resolve the grievance then we advise the consumer to go to court, where adequate compensation and punishment is given."

But lack of publicity for the helpline has means consumers in the nooks of the country aren't aware that pre-litigation settlement through easy means is an option.

But for a population of over 135 crore, creating awareness is a challenging task, more so with the range of diversities — linguistic, socio-economic, regional and demographic. This can only happen as a sustained national programme with adequate resources and funds.

Recently, a standing committee stated that more funds need to be allocated to raise awareness of rights and the redress mechanisms available to complainants.

Many and toothless

There is a multiplicity of windows to redress consumer complaints, but consumers like Rajesh Kumar say the bodies are toothless.

When the Bill was introduced this year, Kumar hoped that his broken water purifier would finally be fixed. He had bought a Eureka Forbes RO and UV purifier, which came with the promise of free servicing for three months. The filter stopped working after two months. "Despite calling customer care and the salesperson, there was no response. It took me two months to register a complaint with the company, and only when I told them I was going to court. It took another month to resolve the issue," Kumar told DNA.

Roji Kumari, on the other hand, was driven to a point of such annoyance with her service provider Vodafone that she decided to destroy her 10-year-old mobile number. "All of a sudden, my bill shot up by 100 per cent. I started calling the customer care and they kept delaying the issue, generating more and more bills for call I never made," she said, adding that she finally threw away the SIM card. "It was not worth a court battle," she said.

Roji and Rajesh are among lakhs who do not even seek a resolution through the grievance redress system.

We follow standards: Industry

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) claims it has strict rules for limiting the liability on customers in case of banking frauds. But it has nothing to say when customers are harassed and intimidated by banks. Bank recovery agents are known to misbehave with men and women in their houses, offices as well as public places if they default on payment of dues even for a month. This is a dinner-table criticism of the banking authority: it turns a blind eye to small customers' complaints but gives free rein to tycoons like Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi.

SBI managing director Praveen Kumar Gupta said, "We have an entire department looking into customer complaints with an internal ombudsman who is generally an outsider hired by the bank. The ombudsman decides on the action to be taken which is binding on the bank, but we do make a fair assessment of the case and try to solve it at the bank level. If it fails to be addressed at the bank level, it is escalated to the RBI ombudsman system where the regular looks into the complaints."

According to RBI's data collected under its banking ombudsman scheme, in 2017-17 alone, banks received 1,30,987 complaints for handing out unsolicited credit cards and hiking interest rates on home and car loans without intimation. Three quarters of these complaints (73.5%) came from urban and metropolitan areas. Year on year, while the rural population recorded a phenomenal increase of 41 per cent, complaints from rural and semi-urban areas rose 13%. It was 39% for urban areas and 13% for metropolitan.

Rajkiran Rai, the chairman and managing director of Union Bank of India, said, "We have customer grievance redressal system at the board level. No complaint is left unaddressed. Customers can even file complaints on Twitter, besides the bank's portal. The loss is entirely to the bank."

When it comes to ATM malfunctioning and frauds, if it is reported within three working days, the liability on the customer is zero. Earlier this month, RBI asked all banks to appoint an internal ombudsman for a period of 3 to 5 years. An RBI spokesperson said, "Our customer services division is constantly monitoring complaints. We prevail upon the banks to redress the complaints."

On standard operating procedure for addressing complaints, Ajay Seth, head, channel operations, Panasonic India, said, "We follow a two-pronged approach when it comes to addressing consumer plaints. The first option for customers is to register the plaint through a toll-free number. The service centre sends a technician to diagnose the complaint. Based on the findings, the service team then resolves the problem. The second option is to send a written complaint. Our email executive registers the pliant and the same procedure follows."

He backed the idea that regulatory bodies or consumer courts should issue a compulsory standard for redressing complaints. "Yes, a compulsory standard will help in effectively addressing the complaint," he said, adding that their company hit rate is solutions for 85 per cent customers within 48 hours.

Ravi Bhatt, the national service head for Godrej Appliances, said that irrespective of how good and well designed the products are, consumer complaints remain an inescapable reality in categories like appliances and electronics. "These products have a long life, have multiple parts, are used day in and out, and not always as per guidelines. We understand that our job does not end at designing and selling great products, but it starts there. To serve is a core value for the company. So after sales, service is a core area of attention," Bhatt said.

He also said that the process of educating consumers should begin at the point of sale, where the consumer is informed about the product by our sales advisers and brochures and manuals. And at the top of this information is sharing with consumers how they can reach out to the company in case they need any help.

"Our processes are set up to ensure high quality and faster after-sales service, which are ISO-compliant. At the same time, benchmarking is done regularly to ensure we don't miss out on any possible scope of improvement. We consider multiple parameters for reviewing our service delivery processes internally; open calls, escalating calls... and others," he said.

He claimed his company has a hit rate of more than 99% when it comes to customer satisfaction.

Carmaker Volkswagen also said it resolves complaints to the customers' satisfaction. It said it follows its own internal norms, which are aligned as per the consumer protection laws and are best as per industry standards. "As a standard protocol, our dealer partners connect with the consumer within earliest possible working hours to understand their complaint in detail."

Similarly the telecom industry claims it follows best international standards to address consumers' grievances. Network issues, call drops, call muting are some of the issues that cellphone users face regularly. Perhaps because the pace and volume at which users are lapping up mobile services, especially data, is far more than the growth in related infrastructure.

As part of empowering consumers, the government has approved a proposal for setting up an ombudsman for the telcos. In May this year, the Telecom Commission, the highest policy-making body of the Department of Telecommunications, approved the proposal for an ombudsman to resolve complaints — a long-pending demand from telecom regulator TRAI.

However, telecom giants claims that all consumer grievances are addressed speedily. The country's largest telecom player, Vodafone Idea, stated, "We have deployed best-in-class tools and technologies to enhance customer experience for all interactions across platforms."

It stated that over 408 million customers are currently serviced through all offline and digital channels under brands Vodafone & Idea. It also said that a well-defined Telecom Consumer Charter by TRAI provides clear guidelines for customer grievance redressal in the telecom sector.

In a statement, the company said: "From the neighbourhood customer service centres and retail stores, to call centres, to digital service platforms such as chat, apps and social media (Twitter/Facebook), we offer industry best practices for enhancing customer experience and redressal, when required."

And it is required quite often, considering there are about 10 million grievances and complaints every quarter from telecom consumers. The telecom ombudsman is expected to usher in a more efficient and satisfactory redressal system once it starts functioning, Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said.

Then there are the woes related to app cabs, which are already running into unaccounted numbers. Consumers of Uber and Ola feel they are looted by the online cab-hailing companies, which scarcely care for their time or convenience.

Everyone's doing their job?

Lawmakers claim they are taking every step to ensure consumers' issues are resolved and interests protected. Corporate houses claim they provide best standard practices when comes to problem resolution. Both assert that they are doing the best they can for the consumer.

Yet, consumers feel left out on a limb when things go out of order, and when they go to seek recompense, they find that the laws seem to have been made to appease big businesses, rather than the small customer.

They also fail to understand why business houses have divided them into different class and caste categories when it comes to addressing complaints.

All because there is no simplified, integrated and efficient single window in the country to heed and rectify consumers' problems. The existing bodies are multifarious, toothless, and sometimes even untraceable. This has left consumers more perplexed and annoyed than having purchases conk out.

Considering the vast scale of disgruntlement, the government needs to get its act together and come up with smarter, stronger legislation, which is in reality for the consumer first.