Column: Consumer Caveat

"Shop till you drop" is no more the smartest or even the kindest idea these days, with the Planet reeling under the mountainous weight of landfills and trash. But shopping is essential, at least for essentials like food and medicines! But when you shop, do you ever check the Maximum Retail Price (MRP) on the food, clothing, medicines or other things that you buy? There could be some real good consumer law violation out there, as a few consumers found out! Gerald Castelino of Mysore had gone to a liquor shop called True Spirits 2 in Kuvempunagar, Mysore where he…

The beauty business is like a slinky sorceress who ruthlessly exploits every weak spot in our armour, to make us spend recklessly. This business grabs us with all those advertisements telling us what we should want or need – it could be the lips of Angelina Jolie or the chesty charm of Salman Khan! A whiter than white face or a pencil slim figure! Luckily the Consumer Protection Act helps people when cheated by the sellers of instant beauty. Dr. Batra's Hair Care became a nightmare for a young prematurely balding Chandigarh boy Harjot Singh, a minor (aged below 18) who…

Health shopping today is one of the sure-shot ways of losing not only cash, but also our mind, because quacks have invaded the markets in hordes! They are as huge, unscrupulous and harmful as the creepiest creatures and ghouls crawling out of a Stephen King chiller or a Lord of the Rings movie! Several recent advertisements put out by some of the biggest and the smallest drug companies in India for selling their potions, lotions, clinics, tablets and treatment for all sorts of ailments have been banned by the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), because they violated the Drugs…

Five hopeful Mysorians, had planned a four-day trip to Singapore with Go Holiday Makers in Mysore which arranges national and international trips for consumers. The five consumers, Pushpa Talawar, Radha, Govindaraju, Dasegowda B.S. and Vittal Talawar, had paid up hefty amounts to Sri Bhaskar, owner of the Go Enjoy Holidays, for a package trip. They were promised a wonderful holiday with airport drop and pick up, hotel transport, hotel rooms, breakfast, lunch, dinner etc and they paid up a total of Rs 330,000 to Sri Bhaskar. When they reached Singapore, they were dismayed to find that no one had come…

In the increasingly consumerist world that we live in, not a day goes by when we don’t shop -- whether it is for small things like vegetables, fruits or chocolate, or bigger stuff like cars, refrigerators and phones. And it is quite maddening when the vegetable seller palms off some spoilt cauliflowers on us, or gives us stale fish that even the cat turns up its nose at. Your new refrigerator might stop working in the middle of a very hot day or the stitches of the expensive dress you bought at the mall may come apart in a day’s…