New consumer ombud’s tips for shoppers September 8 2013 at 12:10pm By Staff Reporter If you believe your consumer rights have been breached or you’ve been on the receiving end of bad service, you now have another avenue of recourse: the office of the Consumer Goods and Services Ombud (CGSO). The new ombud is advocate Neville Melville, who served as the banking ombudsman for seven years, between 2000 and 2007. He took office in June this year. Melville has authored several books on the Consumer Protection Act (CPA) and has helped various companies and organisations implement the CPA or improve their complaint-handling capacities. Like the ombudsman for short-term insurance and the banking ombudsman, Melville is a voluntary ombudsman (as opposed to a statutory ombud, such as the Pension Funds Adjudicator) and has jurisdiction only over his members – in other words, companies who subscribe to the Consumer Goods and Services Industry Code of Conduct. Subscribers include companies in the retail, wholesale and manufacturing sectors. This week, Melville issued a media release listing some common areas of consumer complaints and advice on how to go about complaining to his office * Poor quality goods. If you buy something that is of a poor quality or defective, the CPA offers you recourse. “Under the CPA, consumers are entitled to ask for the goods to be repaired, replaced or refunded if they are defective,” Melville says. “The choice is the consumer’s – the retailer cannot force you to have the goods repaired if you want a refund or replacement.” He says you can also insist on a cash refund instead of a store credit, provided you return the goods within six months of purchasing. “When buying online, be sure to read the small print. However, whatever the supplier’s return policy, if the goods are defective, you are entitled to have them replaced, returned or refunded. And the supplier must cover the expenses.” Make sure you keep your receipts to make the process easier, he says. * Refusal to accept returns. You may have loved that handbag or those shoes yesterday, and changed your mind today? That doesn’t entitle you to return them. “It’s a mistake to think that a company must take back goods you purchased if there’s nothing wrong with them,” Melville says. “The Act requires a supplier to accept a return only if there was something wrong with the goods.” However, a “cooling-off period” of five days applies to direct marketing sales and to credit transactions, such as purchasing a car, where there is a written agreement in place. Buying goods using your credit card counts as a cash sale. “If there is nothing wrong with the goods, the retailer may insist on a till slip as proof of purchase or for the item to be in its original packaging in order to accept a return,” Melville says. “Most reputable retailers have a returns policy [for non-defective goods], which may specify a time limit for returns, usually up to about a month.” * “Baiting”. Companies use marketing tactics such as sales and promotions to get you through the door. But if you arrive only to be told they’ve run out of the advertised stock, you may have grounds for a complaint. Under the CPA, retailers must ensure that they have sufficient stock to meet reasonably anticipated demand for any products that are promoted or advertised. “If a company advertises goods at a specific price and runs out of stock, they can be held liable for ‘baiting’ consumers,” Melville says. “If the consumer can show this, they have grounds for complaint or can demand goods of a comparable quality and value.” Most complaints received thus far by the CGSO are the result of poor complaints resolution by companies, he says. This includes consumers not being able to contact the company, being kept waiting for an answer for an unreasonable period of time, unhelpful customer service staff, and being given conflicting advice about the complaint. “If handled correctly at store level, there would be far fewer formal complaints,” he adds. “Companies should focus on complaints as much as the sales.” If you need help resolving a consumer complaint, visit cgso.org.za; call 0860 000 272 (CPA); or email [email protected]. The CGSO will deal with your complaints against suppliers efficiently and fairly, negating the need for you to have to go to the National Consumer Commission, which is “inundated with complaints
Posted on: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 04:59:56 +0000
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