Tuesday, 16 January 2018

Consumer Responsibilities Under Consumer Protection Act

Both government and non-government organisations have been putting various efforts to protect the interest of consumer, however, consumer exploitation will stop when consumer itself will take part in these efforts and make sure that he takes a step forward and fight for his consumer rights, “File A Complaint In Consumer Court” in case he is cheated on the goods and services purchased.
With rights comes the responsibilities, here also consumers who want to enjoy their consumer rights under Consumer Protection Act, have to bear a few responsibilities listed below:


1) Consumer must use his rights — Under Consumer Protection Act, the government of India has granted several consumer rights like the right to choose, right to safety, right to be heard, etc. however, these rights will only be useful if the consumer who is exploited comes forward and exercise these rights. The consumer as always devote a lot of time selecting and purchasing his needed product, if he is not satisfied with this purchase (reason may be quality or anything else), he must know his consumer rights and use them whenever needed.

2) Cautious Consumer — It is important that consumer play with his intelligence and should not blindly believe the seller. It is his right to ask for the product or service information and he must insist on getting the same.

3) Filing Complaints for the Redressal of Legitimate Grievances — In most cases, the consumer ignores the loss of money he suffered due to the defective products or services sold by the manufacturer, however, this attitude of not filing the complaint against the faulty item encourages the sellers and they become habitual of cheating others with defective or low standard goods and services. It is not only our right but our duty to report such incidents so as to teach them with the necessary lessons. It is important that you report even for a small loss but then the complaint must be genuine and report the actual problem rather than an exaggerated version of the defects or loss of goods.

4) Be quality conscious — The problems associated with low-standard, duplicate and adulterated problems can be resolved only when the consumer stops compromising on the quality of the products. The Government has set quality marks for almost every product being introduced in the market place, it is the duty of the consumer to buy products only after analysing the products with these quality marks. A few examples of these marks include: ISI mark, ISO, Agmark, Wool Mark, etc.

5) Don’t fall in to the trap of Advertisements — The advertisements are intended to make a mountain out of a molehill i.e. often exaggerate the features, use and quality of product and service. It is the duty of the consumer to match the actual features and quality of the product to what is shown in the advertisement and report the difference to the brand or the advertising agency and insist them to stop showing overstated features.

6) Buy with genuine Cash memo — To file a consumer complaint, the consumer would be needing a few documents, out of which the most important is the evidence of purchase i.e. the cash memo. Even though a seller is bound to give a cash memo on every purchase, a few sellers just to cut on the recent taxes tempt consumers to purchase without proper cash memo. For future complains and refunds, the consumer must insist on cash memo.
Apart from the above mentioned, there a few more responsibilities of the consumer of today, these are:

1) Form consumer societies for actively educating other consumers of their rights and duties with regard to Consumer Protection Act.
2) Respect the Mother Nature and stop contributing to the environmental pollution.
3) Discourage black-marketing.
4) Be aware of brands that sell the similar type of products and services.
Pay attention to these responsibilities and must file a Complaint in Consumer Court for even the smallest loss. For more such informative blogs, visit

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