The Consumer Protection Association formed toward the end of last year has failed to make its mark according to some who had hoped for relief from avarice establishments or individuals.
One such average Mo writes: “In 2006, my wife and I had been considering purchasing a new car. After weeks of shopping at the different automobile agencies, we had our mind set on a specific model. The company’s attention to detail was amazingly nonexistent, coupled by their lack of technical details on the model we were considering and followed by their incredible ability to annoy the customer into payment of dues that were not due yet.
“After having to put up with this intrusion of my privacy through the monthly collection annoyance for a couple of years even though payment had been punctual, I discovered a wonderful functionality on my mobile phone to block out annoying and intrusive callers.
“Their phone number apparently was the only one on the list, so I kept ignoring their calls and continuing to pay my installments on their usual due date. One day as I was on the way to pick up my family from the airport, a police car sped behind me ordering that I pull to the curb. I was perplexed trying to figure out which traffic violation he might be considering charging me for driving normally. He informed me that there was a notification on the car and it should be impounded. The reason? It was reported that I had issues with the company financing my car.
“A host of annoyed thoughts coursed through my mind, as I had always been punctual and dutiful toward making my monthly payments on time, while ignoring the incessant calls a few days prior every payment date. A multibillion dollar corporation was unwilling to invest in a proper system to track payments, and had flagged me as a payment defaulter. It dawned on me that the company’s pursuit of perfection was much distorted.
“Now raising a complaint against such a company would be simple if there were consumer protection laws, which I’m sure there are with concealed toll free numbers that ring somewhere with no one to pick up the phone. But what was amazingly remarkable was the speed of response by police to make sure that these companies’ rights were protected. What about my rights of free passage when I had not committed any infraction?
“This simply summarizes another bizarre incident where a close friend of the family was having trouble collecting three years due rent of an apartment. Upon visiting the local police station to file his complaint, he was told to bring the tenant in question with him to the station to review the case. When he replied that it would be next to impossible to drag the tenant to the station, it simply fell on deaf ears. His pleas to the consumer protection agency fell on deaf ears.
“He figured that since no income was being generated in helping out the building owners in these cases and while chasing suspect late offenders could net the police department SR400 for every vehicle stopped and escorted to the impound yard, he wondered if all building owners facing a similar situation wouldn’t mind paying a SR400 fee for collection of their rents that had been overdue for three years.”
Average Mo has a score to settle for the inconvenience of being delayed to get to his family at the airport. But as he surmised, there was simply no body to turn to for help. Is there one, I wonder?
