Consumer Affairs

2.Main Content

Consumer Affairs

This page contains information about:
Resolving problems with goods and services
Where to get help
First steps
ADR options
Small claims
Internet shopping disputes
Complaints about utilities
Research

Resolving problems with goods and services
As a consumer, it is difficult to know where to go to resolve disputes. If something you have bought goes wrong, the cost of going to court, or paying for ADR, is often more than your purchase is worth.

A big problem is that there is very patchy provision of consumer redress schemes. For example, the top ten complaints made in 2007 to the government consumer helpline, Consumerdirect, were about:

Second hand cars from independent dealers
Service agreements on mobile phones
Televisions
Mobile phone handsets
Personal goods and services
General building work
Car repairs and servicing from independent garages
Upholstered furniture
Internet service providers
Second hand cars from franchised dealers

Of these, only service agreements on mobile phones and internet service providers have national consumer redress schemes. Some furniture suppliers are covered by the Furniture Ombudsman, but many are not.

This page gives you an overview of the few consumer ADR schemes in the UK, and where to go for more information.

There are four main ADR options for consumer disputes:

Ombudsmen – Where they exist, ombudsmen schemes are usually free for consumers. For example, the Financial Ombudsman Service will deal with complaints about banks, insurers, mortgage companies, and most other financial services providers.

Conciliation – Some trade associations run conciliation schemes for dealing with consumer disputes with their members. Despite its name, the The Furniture Ombudsman (Qualitas) is a conciliation scheme run by the furniture industry.

Mediation – Commercial mediation is usually disproportionately expensive for consumer disputes, but there are some options for free or low cost mediation. See below for a few ideas.

Arbitration – Some trade associations fund arbitration or adjudication schemes for settling consumer disputes. Some are free to consumers, others make a small charge. A well-known example is the ABTA arbitration scheme for holiday disputes.

More detail is given about all of these under ADR options later on this page.
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Where to get help
You can get free advice about consumer problems and your rights as a consumer on the government funded Consumerdirect website, or you can call the Consumerdirect helpline on 08454 04 05 06 during working hours.

Here are some other places where you can get help or advice with consumer problems:

Trading Standards - If a local trader has broken the law, you can report them to the local Trading Standards Office. Trading Standards offices are funded by your Local Authority, and have powers to investigate complaints about things like false or misleading descriptions or pricing, weights and measures, and safety of consumer goods. However, they won’t give you individual advice, or help you with resolving your dispute – for that you’ll need to get in touch with Consumerdirect. Trading Standards offices are listed in the phone book under your local authority. In Northern Ireland, Trading Standards officers are based in the Trading Standards Branch of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment.

Office of Fair Trading - This government department is responsible for 'encouraging businesses to comply with consumer law, and acting decisively to stop hardcore or flagrant offenders'. The website provides information and resources for consumers, but again won’t help with personalised advice – contact Consumerdirect.

Advicenow - This award-winning website has user-friendly information on a whole range of legal problems, including consumer disputes. You could also visit the Advice Guide which is run by Citizens Advice, or the government’s Community Legal Advice website, which provides a directory of Community Legal Advice Legal Advisers, as well as a series of useful leaflets including debt (leaflet no 1) and problems with goods and services (leaflet no 13).

Key websites:
Consumerdirect
Trading Standards
Office of Fair Trading
Advicenow
Advice Guide
Community Legal Advice

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First steps
The first step to resolving a consumer complaint is always to complain directly to the trader or organisation involved. You can have a look at howtocomplain.com to get some ideas about how to do this effectively. In particular, have a look at the ‘top tips for complaining’ page.

If you don’t get the result you think is fair, then ask whether they have a complaints procedure. Most shops and businesses will have a more formal complaints procedure which is designed to bring complaints to the attention of the right people in the organisation. If you want to take your complaint further – to an ombudsman, or to an arbitration scheme, for example – you will probably need to show that you’ve tried the complaints procedure first.
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ADR options
Ombudsman schemes
If the complaints procedure hasn’t worked for you, then the Consumers' Association recommends using an ombudsman as the first port of call in consumer disputes. This is because Ombudsmen are free to consumers, and also because ombudsmen will investigate the problem directly, so the whole responsibility doesn’t rest with you. In most cases the ombudsman's decision is not binding on the consumer – if you’re not happy with the outcome, you can still go to court.

Most ombudsman schemes have an initial conciliation or mediation stage, where a member of the ombudsman staff will try to negotiate a solution by talking to you and to the business you are complaining about, and offering advice on an appropriate way forward. As an example, over 90% of the complaints taken on by the Financial Ombudsman Service are resolved in this way.

The problem for consumers is that there are only a few ombudsman schemes that can help. The most useful are:
- The Financial Ombudsman Service which deals with complaints about banks, insurers, mortgage companies, and most other financial services providers.
- Otelo, which deals with complaints about some telephone and internet providers.
- The Estate Agents ombudsmen
- The Removals Industry Ombudsman Scheme
- The Energy Ombudsman

Conciliation
Conciliation works in much the same way as mediation – an independent person tries to help you resolve your dispute with the other party. There is no clear reason why some schemes use the term ‘conciliation’ and some use ‘mediation’. You are likely to come across ‘conciliation’ as an option in schemes run by trade associations to help resolve disputes between consumers and their members. However, you need to think carefully about just how independent the conciliation scheme is, if it is funded and run by the organisation that represents the business you are in dispute with.

It is worth knowing about The Furniture Ombudsman (Qualitas). Although it uses the name ombudsman, it is not a full member of the British and Irish Ombudsman Association. It is primarily a conciliation scheme run by FIRA, the Furniture Industry Research Association, which represents furniture retailers. If you are in dispute with a shop where you have bought furniture, a kitchen or a bathroom, this scheme will help you try to sort it out through conciliation. Members include B&Q, MFI, and over a hundred other suppliers.

Mediation
Mediation, like conciliation, involves an independent third party helping to resolve your dispute. The problem with using mediation in consumer disputes is that the cost of a mediator may well be more than the dispute is worth.

However, there are a few options for low-cost mediation that are worth trying.

The government has funded a National Mediation Helpline which gives callers information about mediation, and also details of mediation providers who are accredited with the Civil Mediation Council. All of the mediators listed on the helpline have agreed to offer mediation according to a fixed scale of fees. You can contact the helpline if you have begun court proceedings, of if you have not yet started on the court process.

If you decide to take a business to the small claims court, you will automatically be offered free mediation. The government has funded a mediation officer in each court area in England and Wales; if both sides agree, they can provide telephone or face-to-face mediation. This is covered by your small claims court fee, so there is no extra cost. If you are unable to resolve the dispute through mediation, you can still have a small claims hearing without any further delay. There is more information about this on the County Court mediation page of this site.

If you can’t afford commercial mediation fees, but you are not eligible for legal aid, LawWorks may provide pro-bono (free) mediation and linked legal advice.

Although most Community mediation services are limited to handling neighbour disputes, some have a more flexible remit and will take on disputes between consumers and local builders or traders. These services are usually charities and offer their services free to the user. For consumer claims, or other claims with a monetary value, however, they might charge a small fee.

A few Trading Standards departments (which are run by local authorities) fund mediation services for consumers and traders within their area.

Arbitration and adjudication
Arbitration and adjudication are different from conciliation and mediation. Instead of trying to help two parties in dispute reach an agreement, the arbitrator or adjudicator will look at both sides of the argument, usually in the form of written evidence, and make a decision about who is right. The model is the same in both arbitration and adjudication, but in arbitration the decision is legally binding on both parties. This means that if either party is unhappy with the decision of the arbitrator, they don’t have the option of taking the case to court. But it also means that you can apply to the court to register an arbitration award as a judgement, and get it enforced in this way.

In order to take a dispute to binding arbitration in this way, both parties need to agree to it. You should be aware that many consumer contacts contain an ‘arbitration clause’ which commits you to using arbitration to resolve any dispute which might arise. This means that you may find you have ‘agreed’ to arbitration without realising it, because you didn’t read the small print in a standard service contract or a delivery note. However, if the dispute is about an amount which is under the small claims limit (£5,000 in England and Wales) you are not forced to arbitrate if you haven’t given informed consent to arbitration since the dispute arose. In other words, if you are the consumer you can opt out of an arbitration clause in the small print, but the trader can’t.

Arbitrators can be very expensive. But the IDRS, part of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, runs quite a few adjudication and arbitration schemes for trade associations which are either free or low cost for consumers. Two well-known schemes are ABTA arbitration for disputes about holidays, and CISAS which offers adjudication on consumer disputes with telephone and internet services providers.
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Small claims
If you can’t resolve your consumer problem through discussion, negotiation, complaints procedures or ADR, then you have the option of taking your dispute to the small claims court.

The advantage of the small claims procedure is that it is relatively simple and informal, so you don’t need expensive legal advice. You can get information and guidance on the Small claims process on the Courts Service website. You can also get information and help with filling in forms from the court staff. The small claims procedure involves a hearing in court, before a judge, which has both advantages and disadvantages. The Consumers' Association claims that a hearing is a plus for the ordinary person; you get the chance to explain your problem in person, in your own words. For some consumers, however, a hearing is a daunting prospect.

Don’t forget that you automatically get offered free mediation when you make a small claims application in England and Wales.

Key websites:
Courts Service
Scottish Courts

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Internet shopping disputes
In these days of internet shopping, you may find yourself in dispute with a seller you have never met. In fact the business may not be based in the UK, so it can be difficult to know how to go about resolving your problem, particularly if it involves taking court action in another country. On-line dispute resolution services are one ADR option that is being developed. The online auction house eBay, for example, uses an independent internet-based mediation scheme called SquareTrade.

You can find information and support for consumers shopping across the EU on the European Consumer Centre website. This site is run by the Trading Standards institute, and contains information about air travel, package holidays, timeshares, international mobile roaming, EU trading scams, internet auctions and buying goods and services in other EU countries.
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Complaints about utilities
There are regulators that oversee the way gas, electricity, water, post and telephone providers behave. The four main regulators in England and Wales are:
Ofwat for water companies
Ofcom for telephone and internet service providers
Ofgem for gas and electricity companies
Postcomm for postal services

You can complain to a regulator if you think a utilities provider is breaking the rules, and they will investigate. They may require the provider to change what they are doing. However, regulators do not normally help individual consumers with making complaints, or getting compensation when things have gone wrong.

If you have a complaint about any utilities provider, you should first complain to the company direct. If you are not satisfied with the way the company has dealt with your complaint, you can take it on to the next stage:

Water
For a water company, the Consumer Council for Water will offer consumer advice and support with complaints.

Telephone and internet
For a telephone company or internet service provider, there are two organisations which will deal with unresolved complaints. Don’t forget, you have to try to sort things out with your supplier first, and neither of these two schemes will take on your complaint unless you have done this.
- CISAS (the Communications and Internet Services Adjudication Scheme)
- Otelo (the Office of the Telecommunications Ombudsman).
Every telephone and internet services provider has to be a member of one or other of these two redress schemes – you can find a list of their members on their websites.

Complaints about premium-rate telephone providers are dealt with by ICSTIS (the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services).

Gas and electricity
From 1st October 2008 there is a new series of bodies to help consumers deal with complaints about gas and electricity suppliers.

The first stage, as always, is to complain to the supplier. If you need information about how to go about this, or advice on what your rights are, you can contact Consumerdirect. They will have a dedicated call centre to help with consumer complaints about energy suppliers in England, Wales and Scotland. Unlike Energywatch, the consumer champion under the old system, they will not take responsibility for sorting out your complaint directly with the company, though they may forward details of your complaint to the supplier by email. They will advise individual consumers, and small businesses with under 10 staff.

You can get extra help dealing with your complaint if you are a vulnerable consumer, or if your problem is particularly urgent or complex. So if your energy supply has been cut off, or if you are being threatened with disconnection, or if your personal circumstances make it hard for you to make a complaint yourself, Consumer Direct can refer you to Consumer Focus. Consumer Focus is the new name for the National Consumer Council, and its Active Help Unit will take responsibility for following up such complaints with the suppliers concerned, and supporting vulnerable consumers through the complaints process.

If the supplier does not resolve the complaint to your satisfaction within 8 – 12 weeks, you can take your complaint to the Energy Ombudsman. From 1st October 2008 all gas or electricity suppliers and networks are required to be members of this ombudsman scheme, which until now has been voluntary. It has been approved by the regulator Ofgem. Again, the ombudsman will take complaints from individual consumers and small businesses with fewer than 10 staff.

The General Consumer Council for Northern Ireland helps with complaints about natural gas, electricity and solid fuel/coal in Northern Ireland.
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Post
From 1st October 2008 there are new procedures from complaining about postal services.

An Act of Parliament passed in 2007 made it compulsory for all postal services, including the Royal Mail, to have a customer complaints scheme which is approved by Postcomm , the regulator. They must all also be members of a Postcomm approved redress scheme.

So the first thing to do if you have a problem is to contact the complaints department at the postal service you have used. If you need advice or information before making a complaint, you can contact Consumerdirect. If you need help with making your complaint because you are a vulnerable consumer, Consumer Direct can refer you to the Extra Help Unit at Consumer Focus.

If you can’t resolve your complaint with the company directly, you can apply to the Postal Redress Service, known as POSTRS. This is a free, independent adjudication service to resolve disputes between consumers and licensed postal service operators. You can find out more about the POSTRS scheme on the Postal Redress Service page on this site.

Research
There is a summary of some research into 2004 Consumer ADR in the UK
on this website.
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October 2008