Consumer Complaints and their Disposal with Reference to Consumer Protection Act:A Study on Durg District of Chhattisgarh

Consumer is a person who uses goods or avails services. Thus, every person is a consumer since beginning. In legal terminology "Consumer" means any person - who buys or avails goods/services for consideration which has been paid or promised or partly paid or any system of deferred payment and it includes person(s) other than the person who paid the consideration.[CPA 1986]. How a "consumer" changes into a complainant? Every consumer/user expects that purchased product or availed service should be satisfactory. When quality or performance of these goods or services become unsatisfactory, When the quality or performance of products and services is not satisfactory and dissatisfaction arises which later on convert into complaints if not respond, then consumer disputes arises. This can be classified into two i.e. product related and service related.India enacted a specific Act called the Consumer Protection Act 1986 for dealing with consumer complaints. This study is based on the secondary data available with the redressal agency of Durg to analyze the types of consumer cases filed between 2010-15 and their disposal. Findings show that number of cases of new registration is increasing but proportionate disposal of cases was not seen. Standard-Deviation study reveals that there is no consistency in new registration (70.36 Standard-Deviation) compared-to disposal-rate showing consistency with low value (4.69 SD).This study also describes the nature of cases filed during 2010-15, highest number of complaints pertaining to Telephone services and lowest for Electricity. Comparison of complaints of products and services shows that complaints of products are little higher than service related complaints.