Consumer Protection Class 12 Notes

The chapter opens by defining the consumer and then by setting out the rights, because the rights are what the rest of the chapter is about, since every mechanism exists to give the consumer one of these rights.

• A consumer is a person who buys goods or hires or avails of services for a consideration paid or promised, or under any system of credit, and the person who is a member of the co-operative society that sells to its members also counts, and the buyer is a consumer whether or not he is the user, so the person who buys a gift for another is a consumer.
• The consideration may be paid, it may be promised and it may be under the credit system, and the six limbs of the definition cover the cash sale, the credit sale and the hire purchase, and this is why the chapter mentions the credit transactions separately.
• The right to safety is against the goods that are hazardous to life and the goods that are not of the standard the consumer may expect, and against the goods that are sold without the proper standard or the proper labelling.
• The right to be informed is against the deception, the fraud and the misrepresentation about the quality, the price, the standard, the ingredients, the date of manufacture, the date of expiry and the contents, and it is the right on which the whole of the advertisement and the labelling rests.
• The right to choose is the freedom to buy from a large number of sellers, and it is the right against the monopoly and against the tying of one product to another, and the restrictive clauses in a contract are a violation of it.
• The right to seek the redressal is against the practices of the unfair and the exploitation and against the defect in the goods, and it is the right to be heard against a complaint that is not settled.

Consumer exploitation is the act of the unfair dealing with the consumer by the marketer, and the chapter lists the forms of it and then the causes, which fall into the personal, the societal and the market.

• The forms of the exploitation are the false information, the misrepresentation, the exaggeration of the quality, the false claims of the quality, the undercutting, the high pressure selling, the unsolicited goods, the goods of the inferior quality sold as the superior, and the use of the symbols and the images that mislead.
• The personal causes are the illiteracy of the consumers, the unawareness of the rights, the desire for a bargain, the desire for the variety, the susceptibility to the marketing, and the failure to complain, and the last of these is the cause that most troubles the cause of the abuse, because a complaint costs the customer an effort and the effort stops the abuse.
• The societal causes are the information asymmetry, and it is the reason the consumer cannot check the claims of the manufacturer, the general indifference of the society, the irrationality of the demand and the habit of the government of protecting the manufacturer rather than the consumer.
• The market causes are the monopolistic practices, and the competition is so limited that the consumer has no choice, and the market power allows the supplier to fix the price and to pass the cost of the cheating on to the consumer.
• The factors that lead to the exploitation also include the standard of the goods, the packed food and the medicines, the absence of the standardisation and of the labelling, and the standardisation, the labelling and the ISI mark are the answers to the misleading advertisements and to the substandard goods.

The Consumer Protection Act of 2019 replaced the Act of 1986, and the chapter lists its salient features, and the two that are asked most often are the product liability of the manufacturer and the penalty of up to two years.

• The Act came into force on the twenty-seventh of December of 2020, and it replaced the Consumer Protection Act of 1986, and it was enacted to provide for the better protection of the interests of the consumer and for the setting up of the consumer dispute redressal commissions.
• The definitions are given in the Act, and a consumer is one who buys goods or avails of services for a consideration, and the goods include the manufactured goods, the service and the hire, and the deficiency in the service is defined, and the defect is defined.
• The rights of the consumer are given in the Act, and they are the six that the earlier section listed, and the right to the information, the right to the safety, the right to the choose, the right to the redressal, the right to the represent and the right to the education.
• The duties of the consumer and the duties of the marketer are also given, so the Act is not one-sided, and the consumer is expected to use the goods properly and to not misuse the product, and the marketer is expected to avoid the unfair practices.
• The product liability is important, and it holds the manufacturer, the seller and the service provider responsible for any defect or deficiency, and it introduced the concept of the product liability insurance and the no-fault liability, so the consumer is not required to prove the negligence of the manufacturer, and the burden of proof is reversed.
• The punishment is up to two years of imprisonment and a fine up to ten lakh rupees for a non-compliance with the orders of the commission, and the earlier law had only six months, so the Act has raised the penalty sharply.

The rights are given as a separate section because a question often asks for the right that applies to a situation, and the best preparation is to read each right as a case.

• If a packet of a medicine has no date of manufacture or the date of expiry, the right that applies is the right to be informed and the right to the safety, and the two go together because the uninformed consumer is the unsafe one.
• If a firm is the only seller of a product and it raises the price without a change in the cost, the right that applies is the right to choose, since the monopoly has taken the choice away, and the restricted trade practice and the tying of one product to another also come under it.
• If the product does not do what the advertisement said it would, the right is the right to be informed and the right to the redressal, and the misrepresentation is the form of the exploitation.
• If the goods are of a substandard quality and are sold as the superior, the right is the right to the safety, and the answer of the firm is the standardisation and the labelling and the ISI mark.
• The right to the redressal gives the consumer the forum and the procedure, and it is exercised by filing a complaint, and no consumer is required to go to the manufacturer first, so the direct approach to the commission is permitted.
• The right to the represent is exercised through the association of the consumers, and a complaint may be filed by a group or by a recognised association on behalf of the members, and this is the practical way in which a scattered set of customers is served.

The redressal machinery is the three-tier commission system, and the levels, the pecuniary limits and the appellate structure are the parts that are asked.

• The District Commission is at the district level, and it is the first level, and the pecuniary limit of the original claim is up to fifty lakh rupees, and the limit of the appeal is up to ten lakh rupees.
• The State Commission is at the state level, and it is the second level, and the pecuniary limit of the original claim is above fifty lakh and up to two crore rupees, and the limit of the appeal is above ten lakh and up to two crore rupees.
• The National Commission is at the national level, and it is the third and the final level, and the pecuniary limit of the original claim is above two crore rupees, and the limit of the appeal is above two crore rupees, and the further appeal against the decision of the National Commission lies to the Supreme Court.
• These limits are the ones raised by the Consumer Protection Amendment Act of 2022, and the older figures, in which the State heard every claim above fifty lakh without any upper limit and in which the appeal to the National lay above one crore, are no longer correct, so the two-crore ceiling and the two-crore appeal limit are the figures to be written in the answer.
• A complaint can be filed by the individual consumer, by one or more consumers together, by a recognised consumer association, or by the central or the state government on behalf of the consumers, and the time within which the complaint may be filed is two years from the date on which the cause of action has arisen, and this limit was introduced by the 2019 Act.
• The complaint can be filed against the manufacturer, the seller, the service provider, the trader, the person who is the advertiser and the person who is the guarantor, and the goods and the services under which the complaint is made may be those of a person who is a supplier or a provider, and a complaint for a deficiency in the service may be made against the person who provides the service.
• The remedies available to the consumer are the ones the commission may order, and they are the replacement of the defective goods or the free of the defects, the refund of the price of the goods, the refund of the price paid for the services, the refund of the amount paid for the deficiency, the compensation for any loss or injury, the correction of the misleading advertisement, the correction of the hazardous goods in the market and the cessation of the unfair practices.

The last section is about the consumer, not about the law, and it asks what the consumer can do for himself, so the three words in the heading, the awareness, the organisations and the role of the government, are the three parts of it.

• The consumer awareness is the knowledge that the consumer has of his own rights, and the Consumer Protection Act of 2019 itself lists the right to education as one of the six rights, so that the awareness is not a favour that is granted to the consumer but a right that the law gives him, and the Act requires the central and the state governments to make the consumers aware through the programmes and the media.
• The consumer organisations are the registered bodies that work for the consumers, and they are registered under section 12 of the Act, and they can file a complaint on behalf of the individual consumer and of the group of the consumers, and they can also collect the cases of the similar complaints and take them to the commission in the interest of the general public.
• The National and the State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commissions and the District Commissions are the three tiers of the redressal, but the consumer organisation sits beside them, and it is the body that gives the individual consumer the voice that he does not have on his own, because one consumer complaining is easily ignored while an organisation complaining carries the evidence with it.
• The State and the Central Consumer Protection Councils are the bodies of the government that promote the awareness and take the measures for it, and the Voluntary Consumer Organisations and the trade and the industry associations also work with them in the education of the consumer.
• The anti-competitive practices of the business, the false information, the misleading advertisements, the exaggeration of the claims and the use of the sub-standard goods, are the problems that the awareness has to meet, and the practical answer is the simplest one, a consumer who keeps the bill, reads the label, compares the price and complains in time, because the redressal machinery can act only on a complaint that is actually filed.