FG frowns at companies’ inability to resolve consumer complaints

The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) has frowned at the inability of some companies and service providers to resolve consumers’ complaints and provide feedback mechanism for their products.

Mr Babatunde Irukera, the Director-General of the commission, said this at a National Virtual Policy Dialogue organised by the Nigerian Global Affairs Council in Abuja on Monday. Irukera said the development had resulted to an increase in the weekly complaint reports received from consumers by the commission.

He said that the commission was a secondary complaint resolution organisation, adding that they received no fewer than 10,000 complaints weekly.

The director-general said that the commission did not have the necessary staff strength to handle the myriad of complaints thronging them. He said the commission had received complaints on issues from all sectors ranging from power, foreign/local airlines, telecommunications, pay television and online trading among others.

Irukera urged service providers to use the same mechanism they used in distributing their products and services to receive their customers feedback and resolve complaints. According to him, pushing all complaint resolution to the government is not a sustainable approach to consumer protection. “We are a watchdog not consumer protection department of companies. People come to the commission for everything and we have just about 12 to 16 persons in our complaint resolution department. Even if we decide to employ another 3,000 people, we will still not be able to handle all the complaints that come to us,” he said.

“The real people to resolve their consumers’ complaints are companies but they have failed in their duties to customers. Our work is to ensure that companies treat people fairly, eliminating barriers so that competition can thrive and also make sure companies do their job. Companies should rise up to their responsibility of resolving their customers’ complaints to reduce the work on the commission.’’ Irukera, however, advised consumers to work jointly with the commission to hold companies accountable and make them turn a new leaf for effective consumer protection. He said, “transformation is when citizens themselves take responsibility and if there is anywhere a citizen can take responsibility, it is in consumer protection.’’ (NAN)