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LAST week a parent told me about how his eight-year-old daughter insisted on going shopping with him and buying a particular brand of toilet soap, instead of the usual brand that they preferred. She also wanted to buy more than what they needed. The father finally gave in, and he found that the girl could barely wait to get home after that. On reaching home, she quickly unwrapped the soap packets and then she was almost in tears! The father could not understand what it was all about, but he slowly got it out of her — the manufacturer had apparently advertised a lucky gift of a piece of gold jewellery in some of the packets. This is just a curtain raiser. With Divali round the corner, we will come across many such lucky gifts and lottery schemes meant to influence consumer choice. One, therefore, needs to exercise utmost caution at the time of purchase and not allow extraneous issues to cloud one’s judgement. In other words, look at such schemes critically and do not compromise on quality, price and after-sales service for a gift that you may or may not eventually get, or a gift that may not even be worth it in the long run. So let me list out some of the issues that you need to consider while looking at gift schemes. First and foremost, what are your chances of winning a lottery or finding gold jewellery or a gold coin or some such gift in a packet? In the absence of regulations protecting consumers vis-`E0-vis such schemes, there is no transparency in these announcements. For example, a manufacturer does not tell you how many soap cakes have been released into the market, and in how many of them he has put the promised lucky gift. Nor does he mention any batch number that is part of the gift scheme. So for all you know, you might well be buying from the old stock and have absolutely no chance of getting the gift at all. In some cases, there are assured gifts with every product, but even there, you must look at whether the gift is of any value, of any use to you, and whether it will be delivered along with the product. There have been many instances where the customer is told that the promised gift is out of stock and would be delivered later, and is never given. Third, there is every possibility that the gift is really not free at all, and that the manufacturer is recovering from you the cost of that gift either fully or partially. In fact, during every festival season, I recall the efforts that were made by the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission to investigate into such lottery and gift schemes and put stop to those found prejudicial to consumer interest. In many cases, the MRTPC had found that the prices were increased some months prior to the offer of free gifts to either fully or partially cover their cost. Unfortunately, the government is yet to fill the void left by the dissolution of the commission in so far as unfair trade practices are concerned. Like the MRTP Act, the Consumer Protection Act also says that offering of gifts, prizes or other items with the intention of not giving them, or creating an impression that these are being offered free when their cost is either fully or partially covered by the amount charged in the transaction, constitutes an unfair trade practice. Similarly, withholding from the participants of any scheme offering gifts and prizes, and information about the final results of the scheme is an unfair trade practice. They can only adjudicate
over complaints of such unfair trade practice brought before them. So
all the more reason for people to tread with caution and make an
informed choice on the basis of product quality, price and after-sales
service. As far as manufacturers are concerned, I would like to
repeat a piece of advice given by the MRTPC in the case of Avon
Cycles: "Resources that are deployed for the purpose of prizes
could be more optimally utilised for maximising consumer satisfaction
through a general reduction in price." Is anyone listening?
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