Liangjiang leaps forward in consumer rights protection

Chongqing Liangjiang New Area has made great progress in protecting consumers’ rights according to the area’s market supervision bureau.

The time needed to solve a consumer’s dispute has been cut to 14 from 25 days. The new complaint service platforms saved 9.12 million yuan ($1.37 million) for customers in the first half of 2016. Twenty-eight of the cases were disputes involving over 500,000 yuan ($75,200).

Seventy percent of the complaints came from the industrial and commercial systems. A further nine percent came from the second busiest complaint-receiving platform, the one for food and medicine supervision.

Failing products and services were the main reasons for complaints. Commercial products including, food, household articles, and house and building materials, as well as services of restaurants, hotels, apartment management, house decoration companies and entertainment providers were the main targets.

The Liangjiang New Area added two customer complaint channels this year to its credit supervision platform built in 2015. Service statistics will be uploaded to the platforms soon after they are analyzed.

Training will be given to the market supervision bureau’s staff to teach them how to handle commodity price complaints. The staff will also compete in consumer rights protection skills.