Consumer rights

Something happened over the weekend and reminded me something about how much Malaysian’s know about/exercise their consumer rights and how the company doing the sales tend to escape with a lot of things (beneficial to the company only of course). Malaysians, naturally hate /dislike conflicts when it comes to purchasing or ordering stuffs and tend to back off rather than asking or demanding for their rights as a consumer, usually ending up with a bitter taste in our mouths and non-contended feeling after we are forced to chomp down on cold fries or paid higher than stated on the “stamped” price.

Now back to the story over the weekend, this happened at one of our countries biggest pharmaceutical company in Malaysia. We have just stopped by to purchase a product from this shop, and while paying for the product, the cashier keyed in a 10% discount rather than the 20% stated on the bottle. Now this is the interesting part, when we questioned the cashier & staff they claimed it was wrongly tagged and wanted us to pay the 10% discounted price rather than the 20% stated on the product. The staffs insisted that it was wrongly tagged (compared to most of the bottles) and we have to pay for it. Then we demanded to see the manager and as of immediate the price was altered to 20% discounted price (of course the manager as usual was being rude – not smiling or even acknowledging the customer – no wonder we are rated one of the rudest people around). Then there was a time when we were purchasing McD’s in Pyramid, the fries that we ordered was cold and we went back to counter and demanded that it be changed for a new one. As usual the ladies at the counters just refuted us and said that they would not change it. So the ultimate phrase came out again “I want to see your manager in charge”, when I questioned him about the cold fries it was immediately changed and the whole bucket load of it was dumped into the trash (like how U.S McD’s practice it).

So what are the limits of rights do we have as a consumer you might ask? Simple really, as a consumer we always have rights to dispute any wrongly tag price of an item and even unsatisfactory food items that are served to us. View it like when you ordered a beef steak and it comes to you either over cooked or too under cooked for your liking, you would have right to voice it out to the captain to change it. Then there is the sensitive issue of wrong price tagging. If you remember recently there has always been a a stressing that all sales item should be tagged with a price tag. So, as a consumer its not really our fault when the said item has been wrongly tagged and we have every right to dispute and demand that the certain item be sold at the said price (else we can always bring this case to the consumer’s association)

However, end of the day it really falls back to each individual to practice their own consumer rights, let it be the “tidak apa attitude” or to demand for the rights that is truly and should be yours.

Nibble nibble, taut taut, STRIKE! Fish ON!!!