Great. We now have 30 days in which we can take stuff back. We can return dodgy digital data. And we’re going to have US-style class actions (perhaps not so good). But let’s not con ourselves that big business remains anything other than our real master.
Websites Consumer rights are worthless if they are unenforceable. Most web purchases go right most of the time. But when they go wrong, it’s torture when complaints are conveniently ignored, emails routinely unanswered and telephone numbers impossible to find.
Ryanair pioneered this business model, with the complaints department widely thought to be the waste paper bin in the corner of boss Michael O’Leary’s office (though it has improved a lot in recent years). Take, for example, the complaints about travel websites we regularly feature in our Consumer Champions column. Too often consumers are left frustrated when they hit a brick wall trying to contact web-based companies.
Customer service centres In public, every chief executive repeats the mantra that customer service is at the heart of what they do. In private, the words they really chant are “shareholder value”. Why else do they routinely torpedo customer service by outsourcing it? Why do they think customers are better served by someone on lousy pay in a remote call centre, who does not directly work for the company and whose job is on the line if they don’t get the caller off the line within a few minutes?
Adverts We now know that Volkswagen faked its emission figures by gaming the testing system. We have known for a long time that the miles per gallon figures in adverts from nearly all manufacturers are close to fantasy. Yet the big bruisers of the auto industry also get away with nonsensical leasing adverts (and most new cars are bought on lease deals these days).
I’m in the market for a new car, so my eye drops to ads promising a rather fancy motor for “just £179 a month”. In the small print is a note that first I have to put down an £8,450 deposit. We may as well let Tesco advertise milk at 5p a pint, with a deposit of 40p paid at the checkout.
The cosmetics industry, meanwhile, makes extraordinary boasts that go remarkably unchallenged. Miraculous claims for serums are supported by positive test results from “67 out of 83 women” while anti-ageing creams delight “42 out of 61” people from a statistically insignificant poll (of who?) where it is the figures, rather than the body, that are massaged.
Trading standards Local councils can effectively monitor restaurants for mice, and butchers for disease. Can they really take on the might of the giant retailers, with huge legal departments that can bully and threaten underfunded trading standards departments?
And the law is a mess when it comes to web-based traders. Last year we wrote about a ghastly copycat website, Taxreturngateway, which tricked people into paying over the odds to submit their returns. With a web company, the victim has to trace where they are physically based – which is difficult enough – and then contact the local trading standards office there, which might be on the other side of the country. In Taxreturngateway’s case, victims had to contact local officials in Sunderland. It’s time the law caught up with the reality of web trading.
And the rest I’d like to see new consumer rules make web companies more accountable; call centres ‘in-sourced’; adverts more honest; and trading standards centralised as well as have better local funding.
And I have managed to get this far without mentioning estate agents or landlords. Or rogue builders, train companies and broadband services. What new consumer rules would you introduce?
