The Effectiveness of Consumer Courts in the Age of Hyperconsumerism, Consumer Forum Version

The Essay is a part of the objection documents that were submitted on 5 October 2023 by the primary complainant Ratul Aich to the District Consumer Dispute Redressal Forum, Barasat, North 24 Parganas with regards to the case CC/353/2022.

I’m not a legal expert or an advocate. I’m a User Experience Principal Consultant. We often spend our time documenting observations to improve the World System like a social anthropologist. I have filed a lawsuit in Consumer Court in my personal capacity as a layman which imparts me to observe a lot of activities in due course of time that I’m listing down best to my knowledge and experience.

We are living in a Tech Savvy Society in the age of hyperconsumerism. Hyperconsumerism could be made possible by technological advancement which automates and simplifies a lot of manual tasks along with bringing people closer to one another from different parts of the world through innovation in the field of Information technology. Tech companies are innovating at the scale of 10 million users at a steadfast pace, so they also have the scope to instill minuscule vices to exploit at scale at a steadfast pace. Today every multinational company is a Tech company. Tech companies operate in a very different manner from the mom & pop stores. The age-old lengthy procedures of consumer courts are suitable to correct the course of direction of the mom-and-pop stores in silos. However, the consumer court’s lengthy procedures are not suitable for checking the steadfast pace and scale of innovation and exploitations at which the Tech companies operate. Consumer courts require at-scale class action lawsuits and steadfast turnaround time, to serve natural justice at scale.

This is to put things into perspective, Here is a comparison between the drastically reduced time to reach fifty million users by different sectors and companies over the ages. (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-hit-50-million-users/)

Currently, the situation is such that, even if the consumer court pronounces a verdict in favor of the plaintiff after year-long litigation, the service provider ends up making a lot of money in this one-year duration by exploiting the consumers only to reimburse a fraction of that earning as penalty to one of the plaintiffs that won the lawsuit. It is likely, that the companies have already statistically calculated to take advantage of the loophole.

In the age of hyper-consumerism, every day an individual makes a lot of transactions with plenty of businesses. If one consumer dispute takes one year to resolve and requires the following lengthy procedures, then visiting the consumer court seems impractical unless the disputed amount is significantly high. In the case of thrifty amount disputes, the people would sway to settle the dispute in the streets by fighting among themselves instead of visiting impractical consumer court. If in case the transaction has been carried out online and the business establishment is in another city, then people could be easily duped by those who have been already discouraged by the consumer court’s time-consuming, inconvenient, irritating, complex procedures. This cavity will be taken advantage of by the businesses. Actually, such a cavity encourages businesses to deliberately exploit consumers.

Someone willing to file a lawsuit in the consumer court for the first time must be prepared to face the following difficulties.

1. Everything needs to be printed and submitted in the form of a hard copy to the consumer court.
2. The same documents need to be printed and sent by registered post to the service provider.
3. Most of the litigations drag over 3 years. Some white and black lawsuits settle in just over one year.
4. Often the complainant follows a hierarchy to finally reach the consumer court. The consumer first tries to solve the dispute by negotiating it with the Grievance Redressal Office of the service provider which is the highest level of the Customer Care Department of the Company. Then the complainant escalates the matter to the Ombudsman. Then the complainant escalated the matter to the National Consumer Helpline. Then the complainant reaches the National Consumer Dispute Redressal Commission to file the complaint with the District Consumer Dispute Redressal Forum also known as Consumer Court. Therefore, the actual journey made by the complainant passing through various statutory and regulatory bodies is much longer than the duration taken by the Consumer Forum.
5. The complainant has to visit the court 7–8 times over the course of one year. Every time the complainant visits the court, he is expected to submit the hard copy of successive documents in the court and send the same copy of documents by registered post to the service provider.
6. The complainant needs to visit the District Court a few times to get some of the documents notarized like the petition and the evidence-related documents.
7. Visting court, waiting for your turn, and returning back takes up the whole day.
8. Once in a while, we come across a piece of very positive news on Consumer Court about a plaintiff receiving a handsome reward with sted fast justice seems nothing more than a PR activity with respect to the actual reality personally observed.

Exhausting Ombudsman, Consumer Helpline, and Consumer Dispute Redressal Forums.

I assume that moving the smallest of matters to the Ombudsman & Consumer Court on purpose might be an effective customer service cost-cutting tactic by the companies. This will save a lot on hiring, training, and remuneration to on-par efficient customer executives. This is one way of soaring revenue in the account books. It seems to me that companies are deliberately passing minuscule & micro conflicts of thrifty amounts to burden and exhaust the Ombudsman System and Consumer Court. A system that is exhausted will result in a delay of the proceeding that will discourage the consumers from lodging micro complaints of thrifty amounts with the Ombudsman & Consumer Court in the future. The consumers will also advertise their situation with other consumers through word of mouth and social media. This will create a chain reaction to further discourage consumers from lodging the micro complaint of thrifty amounts with the Ombudsman and Consumer Court by passive methods which is another way of soaring the revenue of the companies on account books. Deliberately burdening the legal system will require the Government to allocate additional resources that result in overspending public funds beyond estimation passing the weight onto the shoulders of the public in the form of additional taxes and surcharges.

Tossing and Tiring the Complainant Between Various Statutory and Regulatory Bodies to Sweep the Matter Under the Rug.

Though the Insurance Ombudsman, IRDA, Consumer Court, Appellate, and District Courts are positioned under different ministries in the government of India, yet, the complainants’ expectation and sole objective from these Regulatory, Quasi-Judicial, and Judicial bodies are to receive justice within the stipulated time. So these departments shouldn’t be made a tool of tossing, tiring, and discouraging the complainant to sweep matters under the rug. One regulatory or legal entity’s failure should be seen as the failure of the legal system. The legal system should therefore collectively take appropriate corrective actions to restore the faith of the People of India in the legal system.

The article, ‘Judicial Investigation Friendly Digital Systems, Judibility’ discusses the complexities of digital systems and the lack of capability of comprehending Technology related matters in the right context by a layman, his peer group, and the advocates, living in a tech-savvy society. (https://rat9.medium.com/judicial-investigation-friendly-digital-systems-judibility-b121000a2280)

The lawsuit has been filed in District Consumer Dispute Redressal Forum, Barasat, North 24 Parganas, India, reference number A22090004397 case no CC/353/2022.

The Cavity in Lok Adalat.

Once in a while, a Lok Adalat is arranged by the consumer court to solve piling up pending cases at once. The regular bench is replaced with a special bench for Lok Adalat (best to my knowledge). Some cases are more complex than others. The gravity that the complainant has built brick by brick over a period of time in front of the regular bench can’t be acknowledged by the new bench with the same intensity. This approach tilts the advantage toward the service provider.

Dexterous Advocates Drawn by the Handsom Remuneration Associated with Class Action Lawsuits.

Class action lawsuits involve a significant amount of money. The amount of money involved will motivate quality advocates on behalf of both the parties, the complainant, and the respondent to show interest in cases of the institutional exploitation of thrifty amounts by service providers.

Board Members and Stakeholder Cycle.

There is an undercurrent of Board Members’ (Stakeholder) lifecycle over the Management team’s life cycle that is responsible for the perceived priorities and decisions that are taken in due time. The next in the hierarchy of Management’s lifecycle is the Program lifecycle and Product lifecycle successively. The Company’s products and services have been first marketed with drums and barrels. The company with hyper-acceleration focuses on customer acquisition. A lot of money is being spent on innovation, process improvement, and marketing during this phase. Product Consultants, Analysts, and Research Activities are expensive. The company rises steeply in first few years. The mission is streamlined with the vision of the Organization.

Then the stagnant phase arrives. Over time, product consultants are replaced by operation and sales. This is mainly because of two reasons. Sometimes after the product is launched the requests for radical innovation slow down and the focus shifts to maintain the routine tasks by operations and sales. At this point, the company also tries to recover the hefty budget spent during the research phase which leads to cost-cutting activities. This is when the company’s priorities shift towards resource management in an attempt to achieve a break-even point. The people in the operations apply all types of cost-saving measures to sustain the bleeding expenditures. The innovation, processes, resources, and employees were crippled during this phase. The product and service innovation bloat out of proportion administered by operations and sales head honchos in an attempt to find ways to the break-even point. The spreading portfolio of product and services further add worries to the woes. The change management consultants have been called in at the wee hours to suggest a fresh roadmap to rescue the debt-strapped company. But this is a gimmick. The actual job of these consultants is to rescue the board members, and stakeholders and replace them with scapegoats.

Then the decline phase arrives. The clever board members and stakeholders slowly move out of the board. Scapegoats are identified in different facades of the company by the change management consultants. They are promoted to pass the blame conveniently. The company has been declared fund-deprived, dysfunctional, and a victim of dynamic market consequences to gain the pity of the public, government, and regulators.

Meanwhile, the wealthy stakeholders who had already departed from the board invested in another company from the same sector. The cycle of promoting the new company with bells and whistles begins. We can describe all of it in a one-liner.

Eventually, every Innovation Consultant will be replaced by a Lean Operation Manager in every Department of the Company till CEO. This will continue until the company burns down to ashes only to regenerate as the Phoenix somewhere else in the same sector.

Steve Jobs explained in one of his interviews the occasion in the board members’ and stakeholders’ lifecycle, where the sales and operations head honchos seize the opportunity to lead the company. Steve Jobs on the role of product and marketing people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4

The observation adequately conveys that in the age of hyperconsumerism, quick turnaround time, and rapid Stakeholders’ lifecycle, Consumer Courts are expected to be convenient to contest litigation from the comfort of our homes with steadfast justice delivery mechanisms to serve justice to an instant delivery generation. Therefore, Consumer Courts shouldn’t replicate the processes brick by brick from moderately slow-paced Civil Courts and need ground-up innovation.

How can the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation Government of India forecast Consumer Dispute Redressal Forum (Consumer Court) expansion to adequately address growing hyper consumerism in tech savvy society?

I’m hopeful that my observations will be cherished by the Government and Public Sector Organizations to join hands with the Tech and Statistical Analysis Companies to transform the different aspects of the Consumer Courts turning them into a practical and viable legal option for the public living in the most populated country of the World, that is India, surviving in a hyper-consumerism, tech-savvy society with minimum new age policies sketched for governing Data, AI, Deceptive Algorithms, and UX Dark Patterns adequately.

The Government of India has recently passed the Mediation Bill 2023 which is expected to provide immense UX job opportunities for UX Design Professionals by digitally innovating legal processes.

The extended version of the above essay sheds light on discriminatory reimbursements and discounts depending on one’s race and caste, through man-made and natural Algorithmic Bias in the Insurance Sector and likewise in all other sectors as well. (Link)

First in the series is Judicial Investigation Friendly Digital Systems, Judibility. (Link)

Previous in the series is OBJECTING PETITION UNDER ORDER VII RULE XI (D) CPC R/W S.151 CPC PRAYING FOR REJECTION OF PRESENT COMPLAINT ON THE GROUNDS MENTIONED BELOW. (Link)

Next in the series Noteworthy Judgments on UX Dark Patterns in India. (Link)