BCR NEWS (Mumbai): During this week’s Legal Aid Session, Consumer Guidance Society of India (CGSI) received a complaint from one Nikunj Soni, a consumer who discontinued his Tikona Wi-Bro Account on 20 January 2015 with the confirmation from the service provider for the same on 21 January 2015. The consumer received a bill of Rs 800 for the following month of February 2015 and after contacting the customer care department of the service provider, the consumer was advised to ignore the bill. Later, the consumer started getting phone calls from the company’s advocates threatening him with slapping cases against him and arrest warrant for the pending bills.
CGSI intervened and wrote to the service provider and the matter is settled now.
In another case, Reena Pandya, a student from Borivali applied and registered for PGDM – DLP course at Welingkar Institute. She made the full fees payment of Rs 48,500 for the part time course to the institute via cheque and the institute demanded Rs 1000 per paper learning that the student will be travelling abroad for her work. The institute never informed that the students who plan to go abroad after joining the course will need to pay more Rs1000 per paper for the remaining semesters. The student approached CGSI and CGSI wrote a letter to the institute and a refund of the entire fees was made soon after.
During the session, CGSI received a complaint from a consumer, Sagarika Kochrekar who brought a HTC handset which turned out to be faulty and the dealer refused to replace it. After CGSI’s intervention, HTC has sorted out the problem by not only replacing the faulty phone, but upgrading it to HTC 820Q.
In a real estate related case, the consumer Ramesh Prabhu booked two flats in an under construction building near Kalyan which he was supposed to get within two years. After waiting for two year’s which was promised by the builder at the time of booking, for the procession of the flats; the consumer approached CGSI for its intervention to recover the money which he paid to the builder with the interest. After CGSI’s intervention, the consumer received a cheque of Rs. 12, 72,000 (principal amount with interest) from the builder.
CGSI, the pioneer consumer organization founded in 1966 has been working for the protection of consumer interests since last so many decades. Its Consumer Complaints Redressal Wing receives plenty of grievances from consumers which the legal aid arm addresses on a weekly basis. This week, CGSI’s weekly legal aid session held at their office near Cama Hospital, Mumbai received many complaints and Dr. M.S. Kamath, Hon. Secretary, CGSI and volunteers addressed to the problems of the consumers.
“CGSI is always happy to help the consumers and happy that we solved 4 major cases through our intervention this week,” said Dr. Kamath,
If a valid complaint received, as a practice, CGSI’s Consumer Complaints Redressal wing takes the next step. A letter will be written to the concerned company/party to solve the matter amicably with the complainant. Failing which, the legal arm guides the complainant to move forward with legal remedies. It is a complete consultation and guidance session where each complainant is addressed personally with a nominal fee of Rs 150 to 250 for the service.
CGSI’s other activities include: Consumer education, conducting talks and exhibitions to spread consumer awareness among urban poor and rural areas, testing consumer products and publication of a bi-monthly magazine ‘Keemat.’
