THE MAJORITY of the complaints to the Fair Trading Commission (FTC) have to do with motor vehicles, especially dealers' presentation of inaccurate information on the age of vehicles.
"We find that most of the complaints we receive at the Commission are in respect of motor vehicle problems. By and large, motor vehicles that come in as one year, 1998 for example, and are later found to be 1997, account for about 20 per cent of the complaints we received between April 1, 2000 to March 31, 2001," Barbara Lee, executive director of the FTC, told employees of the government's news agency, JIS, earlier this week.
She said the second most common complaints were about household appliances which accounted for 18 per cent of complaints followed by computers at nine per cent.
Between April 1, 1999, and March 31, 2000, the FTC investigated 644 cases, with 348 cases being completed. Cases of alleged misleading advertising accounted for the majority of matters investigated during the period, comprising just over 50 per cent of all cases dealt with by the Commission. The FTC successfully completed about 54 per cent of the cases it investigated in the 1999/2000 Financial Year.
Mrs. Lee said complaints about the telecommunications sector accounted for nine per cent of all the Commission's cases.
"Sometimes, also, we are asked for opinions on various matters so it's not only complaints that come. We're asked to give opinions whether an activity would be a breach under our Act, even before it might happen before it becomes a complaint."
She explained that the FTC was a competition agency, and competition agencies were interested in preserving the process so that ultimately the consumer could benefit.
Speaking about the Fair Competition, Mrs. Lee said it required the FTC to educate the consumer. The rationale, she said, was to have a more educated consumer who would be more likely to influence the market.
The FTC was established in 1993 to enable businesses to have the opportunity to operate on the basis of the same ground rules relating to competitive practices. The Fair Trading Act provides protection to consumers and businesses with respect to abuse of dominance, tied selling (commonly called marrying), price fixing, misleading advertising and double ticketing, among others.
