Magazine: Consumer protection: people know less than they think

I know, I have seen it, I have heard it – practically every retailer has already heard these words from complaining customers. What customers tend to forget about is that usually they only know half the truth or they compare their situation to cases that hardly resembles theirs. We can say that we are confident in consumer protection matters until our actual knowledge is tested, for instance with the 13-question test that we are about to introduce.

This test was completed by 1,143 people who belong to the 18-25 age group (about half of them were women and half of the participants were men) between November 2016 and January 2017. All participants had to do was to pick the right solution in each of the 13 everyday consumer protection situations, from the choices offered. Questions were concerning promotional products being unavailable, different prices indicated for the same product, warranty periods, replacing a faulty product, CE marking, etc. Having completed the test, participants thought they got 8.2 answers right on average, but in reality they only gave 4.7 correct answers – this means only a 36.1-percent success rate.

Let’s see a couple of examples. Only 11.6 percent of respondents knew that retailers aren’t obliged by law to substitute the product or to pay the money back if a person got the same thing twice as a Christmas gift. Only 12.4 percent of the survey’s participants were able to give the correct answer to the following question: You ordered a product for USD 52.99 (HUF 15,000) from a Chinese online shop. Do you have to pay VAT and customs duty for it?

Most of the young consumers who answered the 13 questions thought that for a HUF 4,999 electronic product (hair dryer) there is an obligatory warranty – only 21.1 percent knew this isn’t the case. Only 19.2 percent of respondents knew: they have the right to send the sweater they bought online back without having to justify their decision within 14 days after the purchase; the wrong answers included 3-, 8- and 30-day purchase cancellation periods.

Dr Róbert Sándor Szűcs
docent
Pallas Athéné University

In general we can say that the older and better educated the respondents were, the more correct answers they gave. Women and those studying economics in some form performed better in the test – both groups had 9 correct answers from the 13 on average. The study revealed that young people know much less about consumer protection than they should, sometimes they don’t even know their rights in the simplest cases. Companies should educate consumers about their rights by organising various activities, because in the long run it is also their interest to have knowledgeable consumers: shoppers can be wrong about their rights but still be convinced that they are right, and situations like this can make them feel dissatisfied, which can lead to their choosing the product of a competitor the next time.