Elly Burhaini Faizal, Tangerang – Companies continue to ignore consumer complaints despite the long-standing stipulations of the 1999 Consumer Protection Law, activists have said.
Huzna Gustiana Zahir from the Indonesian Consumers Foundation (YLKI) said that firms viewed the rising number of consumer complaints as "nuisances".
"Consumer rights continue to be disregarded, as we continue to see a growing number of complaints published in the readers' columns of newspapers or direct complaints forwarded to our organization," Huzna said on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of the 2012 Annual Meeting on Testing and Quality (AMTeQ).
Huzna said that the Consumer Protection Law required companies to take complaints seriously.
"Yet, it seems hard for angry consumers to get the attention of companies. This has forced them to direct their complaints through third parties, such as the news media and consumer protection agencies, like the YLKI," Huzna said.
The YKLI said that it has received 233 complaints this year as of July. The banking, insurance and credit services industry led the list of complaints, comprising 18 percent of all reported incidents, followed by the telecommunications sector.
The year-to-date trend for 2012 follows that of the previous year. Complaints on banking, insurance and credit services comprised 21 percent of all cases recorded by the YKLI throughout 2011, which was up from 13.7 percent of all complaints recorded in 2010.
The housing sector comprised 14.5 percent of all complaints in 2011, followed by the telecommunications sector at 12 percent.
"Most consumers first try to file a complaint directly with the companies. They then decide to report it to the third parties, such as writing a reader letter to a newspaper or requesting mediation from consumer protection associations, as they were not satisfied with their responses," Huzna said.
According to the YLKI, 84 cases of 590 reports it received in 2010, or 14 percent, involved housing complaints.
Husna said that responding properly to a consumer complaint could improve a company's performance.
"They [companies] continue to see consumer complaints as bad things, when in fact such feedback might improve their services or product manufacturing processes in the future," Huzna said.
Husna made her comments at the AMTeQ meeting held by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI)'s research center for quality systems and testing technology at the Science and Technology Research Center (Puspiptek) in Serpong, Tangerang.
Participants at the meeting discussed developing indicators for quality products and the need for calibration laboratories and reputable product certification institutions, among other things.