The customer is always right. Or is he?

There is no doubt that matters have drastically improved over the past years for customers, be they purchasers of a product or of a service. But one must also admit that there is still a long way to go for Maltese customers to get the treatment they deserve. After all, they are the ones who are paying.

The setting up of a specific department to deal with consumer affairs – falling under the Competitiveness and Communications Ministry – was a step in the right direction. Over the years, consumers who felt they needed to file complaints had someone to listen to them, investigate and take the necessary action if their grievances were justified.

But it is a known fact that only a minority of such happenings finish in an official complaint. Most customers tend to try to resolve the issue themselves with the shop owner or service provider, and few complaints end up on the department desk even when the customer is not fully satisfied with the outcome. Many still opt not to involve the authorities when something goes wrong, even when they feel they were short-changed.

The problem is that the change of culture that is needed in this regard is still in its infancy. Although today customers know more about their rights than they used to in the past, these rights are very often not exercised. Many simply choose to lump it, and their only sign of protest is not to return to that particular shop or seek the same services.

And this is where customers are wrong. For as long as they continue to stay away from complaining – to both the shop owner or service provider and to the authorities – this change in culture will never materialise. Because this change must come from both directions – the more customers seek their rights, the more shop owners and service providers will fulfil their duties.

There have been many customers who, for example, did not like their pizza or did not have the steak they ordered cooked to their liking, but ended up eating the food anyway without as much as lifting a finger. There have been others who accepted a new fridge even though it was dented. Others encountered problems with their car a few weeks after they bought it.

A common problem seems to be that after-sales services in Malta are, generally speaking, quite poor. Once a sale is made, it is as if the dealer has nothing more to do with the buyer. If something goes wrong, it could take more than a week for a technician to turn up and, when he does, it has now become a habit for them to charge a fee for just knocking on one’s door.

Time is money, businessmen will argue. But so should customers, especially when they are kept waiting for hours on end before the technician turns up, and sometimes get a call late in the day that “unfortunately we can’t make it today because we were caught up somewhere else”. What about “paying” the customer who took a day’s leave to remain at home to wait for the technician, only to have to call the office that he would not be in the following day because the technician did not turn up after all and will be (hopefully) doing so the next day? How about “forfeiting” the fee for turning up when such situations occur?

It should work both ways, shouldn’t it?

Shop owners and service providers should understand – or, better, should be made to understand – that they have a responsibility towards their customers during the sale, and more importantly afterwards. Companies that invest in after sales services stand a better chance of “retaining” the customer and getting him to buy something else later on.