Consumer Focus faces axe in quango cull

[-Pete-]

What did it cost in 2009?

Maybe the money could be better spent. My local hospital has shut it's A&E and childrens' wards serving around 100,000 people, the nearest is now 30-60 minutes away depending on traffic.

[tinman0]

Mojooo said:

FourWheelDrift said:

"Their activities will be taken over by Citizens Advice and Trading Standards offices."

What's wrong then, no service will be lost.

CAB - they dont have the skills to be advising people on most matters. CAB advisors must have to know a HUGE deal of stuff and they cannot be expected to know everything.

Not really.

A consumer and company are aligned in a contract. Has the contract been fulfilled, yes or no.

In my experience (and I have used CAB), your adviser will go off for a few minutes (in my case 20minutes) and dig out the relevant materials to guide you in the right direction.

Consumer Law is not that difficult at the end of the day.

[tinman0]

Mojooo said:

I wont be affected by these cuts directly but i definitley see a massive disadvantage to UK consumers.

Well, somehow the British consumer got along just fine beforehand, so I imagine they'll be okay in the future.

[Mojooo]

tinman0 said:

Mojooo said:

FourWheelDrift said:

"Their activities will be taken over by Citizens Advice and Trading Standards offices."

What's wrong then, no service will be lost.

CAB - they dont have the skills to be advising people on most matters. CAB advisors must have to know a HUGE deal of stuff and they cannot be expected to know everything.

Not really.

A consumer and company are aligned in a contract. Has the contract been fulfilled, yes or no.

In my experience (and I have used CAB), your adviser will go off for a few minutes (in my case 20minutes) and dig out the relevant materials to guide you in the right direction.

Consumer Law is not that difficult at the end of the day.

They can advise you on your contractual rights yes but consumer protection is pretty wide. Mnay of the consumer complaints I have seen have started with CAB but the CAB couldnt totally help them.

There is more to it anyway, are the CAB going to feed that info through to TS depts so prosecutions can be taken against and serial offenders identified? i dout it, because you will have X amount of TS depts trying to make X amounts of links with numerous CAB around the country.

tinman0 said:

Mojooo said:

I wont be affected by these cuts directly but i definitley see a massive disadvantage to UK consumers.

Well, somehow the British consumer got along just fine beforehand, so I imagine they'll be okay in the future.

Consumer advice and enforcement agencies have been around or 30+ years though

The worry is the slack will not be taken up by anyone if these resources are taken away.

Having worked on the inside I can categorically tell you there are thousands upon thousands of people being ripped off on a large scale all over the UK.

If you watch Watchdog/Rogue Traders, i can tell you there are hundreds if not thousands of rogue traders liek them up and down the country.

[tinman0]

Mojooo said:

There is more to it anyway, are the CAB going to feed that info through to TS depts so prosecutions can be taken against and serial offenders identified? i dout it, because you will have X amount of TS depts trying to make X amounts of links with numerous CAB around the country.

No, because what happened in the past is that the consumer would go directly to the local TS office who would take it up.

I've had TS on the phone before and they do follow these things up.

But the idea that there are tens of thousands of companies up and down the UK ripping people off is stupid. Yes, there are some companies who do need regulation, but by and large they are the tiny minority.

The only reason the dragnet has been widened is because people 'think' they have more rights than they do. You get a bottle of marmalade with a dead rat in it does not equal a lottery win, it merely gets a refund or replacement and a bouquet of flowers saying "sorry".

[Mojooo]

tinman0 said:

Mojooo said:

There is more to it anyway, are the CAB going to feed that info through to TS depts so prosecutions can be taken against and serial offenders identified? i dout it, because you will have X amount of TS depts trying to make X amounts of links with numerous CAB around the country.

No, because what happened in the past is that the consumer would go directly to the local TS office who would take it up.

I've had TS on the phone before and they do follow these things up.

But the idea that there are tens of thousands of companies up and down the UK ripping people off is stupid. Yes, there are some companies who do need regulation, but by and large they are the tiny minority.

The only reason the dragnet has been widened is because people 'think' they have more rights than they do. You get a bottle of marmalade with a dead rat in it does not equal a lottery win, it merely gets a refund or replacement and a bouquet of flowers saying "sorry".

Consumer Direct pass all of the data they get onto each TS dept. All TS depts can access CD to see what is going on at a national level. That link MUST be retained.

The advantage of CD is that it kept data sharing at a national level, without it data will only be kept by each local authority. The worser scenario is that people go to CAB and the data doesn't ever get to a TS dept.

Lets put it this way, from what I know from my work in the industry... there are currently some TS depts that will not respond to MOST (i.e almost all) consumer queries because they don't have the resources or they are focussing only only the most serious issues. This is bearing in mind all calls are filtered by Consumer Direct and everyone will at least get the basic help they need by CD first.

Before CD came into being TS depts would have call handling staff to help people but now most depts have gotten rid as CD does most of that work (I know the one TS dept I know well kept some call staff as they dealt with the more serious issues that required in depth help.

The worry is that these TS depts simply will not return to their old levels, so for many people just ringing the TS office will not result in a positive reaction.

---

In the area I worked in which was just one county the number of rogue trademens easily run into the hundreds. That is before you start including all the shoddy online retailers, high pressure sellers and companies in general that are not following the law.

If you saw the data you would agree that we are far away from living in a place where businesses are honest.

[maser_spyder]

tinman0 said:

Mojooo said:

There is more to it anyway, are the CAB going to feed that info through to TS depts so prosecutions can be taken against and serial offenders identified? i dout it, because you will have X amount of TS depts trying to make X amounts of links with numerous CAB around the country.

No, because what happened in the past is that the consumer would go directly to the local TS office who would take it up.

I've had TS on the phone before and they do follow these things up.

But the idea that there are tens of thousands of companies up and down the UK ripping people off is stupid. Yes, there are some companies who do need regulation, but by and large they are the tiny minority.

The only reason the dragnet has been widened is because people 'think' they have more rights than they do. You get a bottle of marmalade with a dead rat in it does not equal a lottery win, it merely gets a refund or replacement and a bouquet of flowers saying "sorry".

I agree with that.

I bet most enquiries to consumer direct are nowhere near as hardcore as is being made out.

I know we've had people go off to Trading Standards because our 'estimated delivery date' has been missed by a day because of a courier delay, telling us they're entitled to com-pen-say-shun.

This is at a time when the country is under two feet of snow and even the post office has stopped running.

What a waste of taxpayer's money.

I'd wager a good amount that 90% of their enquiries are from total mouth breathers who are just trying to get a freeby.

[tinman0]

Mojooo said:

Consumer Direct pass all of the data they get onto each TS dept. All TS depts can access CD to see what is going on at a national level. That link MUST be retained.

It'a just another level of middle managers justifying their existence.

Local TS offices were perfectly capable of understanding businesses in their local areas.

Sorry, but I've spent time on the phone in a previous business with our local Trading Standards office explaining why a customer was upset and how they've been banged to rights for their own stupidity (usually the inability to follow instructions to upload a website) to know how the system works.

[Mojooo]

A lot of the calls will go down as intelligence - i.e someone moaning about a pricing error ar Tesco

The key thing you have to remember is that its intelligence. People reporting things is good because it helps you get a picture of what is going on.

It people are reporting misleading prices at Tesco regularly then it becomes a different issues doesn't it - even if the issue was a minor one for that particular customer.

--

In some of the more serious cases I have seen it is usually the case that the number of consumers that actually complain about an issue is quite small, but when the investigation is done and you look through records the number of people affected is much greater.

[MilnerR]

From what I can gather Consumer Focus spend around £41 million per year. That seems an awful lot of money to protect consumers who already have statutory rights enshrined in law.

Given the number of cuts that are going to effect real services required to protect life, I don't see that Lord Whitty's impending redundancy is anything to be too concerned about.

Sympathy...... it's between st and syphilis is the dictionary

[Mojooo]

tinman0 said:

Mojooo said:

Consumer Direct pass all of the data they get onto each TS dept. All TS depts can access CD to see what is going on at a national level. That link MUST be retained.

It'a just another level of middle managers justifying their existence.

Local TS offices were perfectly capable of understanding businesses in their local areas.

Sorry, but I've spent time on the phone in a previous business with our local Trading Standards office explaining why a customer was upset and how they've been banged to rights for their own stupidity (usually the inability to follow instructions to upload a website) to know how the system works.

It doesnt beat national intelligence though does it?

What if you have a company operating in a region and they are doing bad things across 6 counties (or if they are in London and doing bad things over 15 of londons councils!) - its easier to get an idea of the scale of things.

[tinman0]

Mojooo said:

tinman0 said:

Mojooo said:

Consumer Direct pass all of the data they get onto each TS dept. All TS depts can access CD to see what is going on at a national level. That link MUST be retained.

It'a just another level of middle managers justifying their existence.

Local TS offices were perfectly capable of understanding businesses in their local areas.

Sorry, but I've spent time on the phone in a previous business with our local Trading Standards office explaining why a customer was upset and how they've been banged to rights for their own stupidity (usually the inability to follow instructions to upload a website) to know how the system works.

It doesnt beat national intelligence though does it?

What if you have a company operating in a region and they are doing bad things across 6 counties (or if they are in London and doing bad things over 15 of londons councils!) - its easier to get an idea of the scale of things.

A company to be caught out is generally operating out of more place than 6 counties, and if its sufficiently deficient, there will be more than 1 customer in each of those areas that is upset with the customer.

Trading Standards were perfectly good enough to pick up the bad companies, without the need for yet another layer of govt to interfere.

[Mojooo]

If we take rogue tradesman as an example

They may live in one county and operate in just that county - or they may operate in their own county and the neighbouring county or just everywhere/nationally.

The point is if the data becomes localised to each council area then its much harder to see the scale of what is going on in the bigger picture.

Through a lot of extra leg work the local TS may be able to collate that data but by the time they realise its a serious problem the number of customers affect might be huge.

edit - the govt didnt interfere and add a layer, so i am not sure what you are on about, consumer direct had its own function and a massive advantage of that was it joined up TS in many ways

i daresay a national TS service would be better than the local ones we have.

the oft is soemthing of an extra layer but the fact that they provide national stuff is their advantage.

Edited by Mojooo on Sunday 10th October 00:49

Edited by Mojooo on Sunday 10th October 00:49

[elster]

Mojooo said:

If we take rogue tradesman as an example

They may live in one county and operate in just that county - or they may operate in their own county and the neighbouring county or just everywhere/nationally.

The point is if the data becomes localised to each council area then its much harder to see the scale of what is going on in the bigger picture.

Through a lot of extra leg work the local TS may be able to collate that data but by the time they realise its a serious problem the number of customers affect might be huge.

edit - the govt didnt interfere and add a layer, so i am not sure what you are on about, consumer direct had its own function and a massive advantage of that was it joined up TS in many ways

[b]i daresay a national TS service would be better than the local ones we have.
[/b]
the oft is soemthing of an extra layer but the fact that they provide national stuff is their advantage.

You are probably right.

In fact I would like to bet 1p on the fact the computer system used by CD with now be used by TS.

So nothing really has been lost, we are back to the improved system without the huge costs of running 3 stages of people.

[Mojooo]

Not really.

Each TS uses its own IT system and they are not all linked to eachother.

But the Consumer Direct data is accessible to all of them. So chances are the Consumer direct IT system will go and each TS dept continues to use its own system

Presumably the Consumer direct phone number will be turned off and everyone now phones their local council.

---

The other main issue is that the time and effort being spent to train consumer direct staff has been wasted unless they can now find jobs in TS departments.

Of course TS depts wont be hiring ALL of these people (if any) so you end up with a shortage of knowledgable staff in the system available to assist.

[Mojooo]

Guardian has an article on it now too:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/oct/10/consum...

Interesting that they highlight TS will now be responsible for taking action against energy companies.

consumer focus just got back £70m for consumers - how do they expect a local dept to take on a national issues, especially when they wont have the skill or resources.

--

if you listen to the BBC Money Box program they have a guy on their from Is it Fair who says consumer focus is not needed as WHICH can do the same thing. another guy who worked for which for 13 years say no way could they. A guy from consumer focus also says no way, because Which dont even have any legislative powers.

[elster]

Mojooo said:

Guardian has an article on it now too:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/oct/10/consum...

Interesting that they highlight TS will now be responsible for taking action against energy companies.

consumer focus just got back £70m for consumers - how do they expect a local dept to take on a national issues, especially when they wont have the skill or resources.

--

if you listen to the BBC Money Box program they have a guy on their from Is it Fair who says consumer focus is not needed as WHICH can do the same thing. another guy who worked for which for 13 years say no way could they. A guy from consumer focus also says no way, because Which dont even have any legislative powers.

People from CD will more than likely go to work for the TS. It wouldn't be hard to implement.

If they have access to the CD system then you would expect that to remain but run by the TS.

Everything is rumour remember though, no one actually knows yet.

[turbobloke]

Still not sure about what part of 'unaffordable' is so tricky.

[Mojooo]

elster - yes thats the theory but I think its pretty bvious councils will not be employing more staff and the IT system to be impemented to over 150 odd councils all at once? don't think so.


turbobloke -i dont doubt the afforability (well, maybe just a little)- i was just making the case for them to be kept and the undoubted mess that will be left once they are closed down.

[loafer123]

Mojooo said:

Not really.

Each TS uses its own IT system and they are not all linked to eachother.

But the Consumer Direct data is accessible to all of them. So chances are the Consumer direct IT system will go and each TS dept continues to use its own system

Presumably the Consumer direct phone number will be turned off and everyone now phones their local council.

Perhaps neighbouring TS department should meet occasionally, have a coffee and a gossip, and see where they have cross-over cases? I mean, it's not exactly rocket science, now is it?