Consumers take issue over report

The Beijing Administration for Industry and Commerce released a report yesterday ahead of World Consumer Rights Day that falls today, giving a review of the complaints and rights protection of consumers in Beijing in 2011.

However, some residents and consumer rights campaigners doubt the official report, which describes consumer rights protection in the capital as having made "substantial progress" in the past year.

Some 96 percent of the 32,003 complaints filed through the administration's hotline and the Beijing Consumer Association (BCA) were successfully mediated, which saved a total of 22.48 million yuan ($3.55 million) in financial losses for consumers, the report said.

The number of complaints about services, which accounts for 61 percent of the overall complaints, exceeded the number of product complaints for the first time. Service consumption has taken a higher rate in people's total consumption, the report said, while disputes that occurred in service consumption are concurrently on the rise.

Clothing products have attracted the most complaints, as quality issues often lead to disputes after the consumer asks for a return or exchange of the product. Cell phones are another major source of complaints, with a total of 2,138 complaints filed, with 72.4 percent about quality as well, the report said.

House rental services have become a sore spot for complaining consumers, with 1,456 complaints filed about property agents in 2011. Disputes about home rental have been increasing after Beijing adopted restrictions on house purchase in February last year, the report said.

Although the official report reveals the progress the government has made in the past year in protecting consumer rights, and said the number of complaints is decreasing compared with 2010, some residents find the report unreliable and complained about the efficiency of the BCA in handling complaints.

"I don't believe the report's data," said Jia Renxiang, a resident in Chaoyang district. Most of the time consumers would fail to find a solution if they go to the vendor when there is a quality issue with a product, and turning to the BCA for help is time-consuming, he said.

"The BCA, like many other government authorities, cannot possibly offer a satisfactory solution within a short time," he said, adding that the Siemens refrigerator-smashing incident would never have happened if the government had done their job.

Several consumers smashed three Siemens refrigerators in front of the Siemens headquarters in Beijing on November 20 last year, in protest at the company's alleged ignoring of consumer complaints about quality problems, which the company denied.

Wang Hai, a consumer rights advocate, told the Global Times that the government's work on consumer rights protection lacked transparency. E-commerce, health promoting products, real estate and cosmetics are the areas that receive most complaints, and which consumers find the most difficult to deal with when a problem occurs, he said.

"Consumers deserve to know more than they have been told," he said, "they need to see more spot-inspection results on products and they need to see how the responsible sellers or producers are punished."