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Life savers

Record numbers turned to the Consumer Defense Association for help in 2006

By František Bouc
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
January 31st, 2007 issue

Illustration by ARTYOM EFIMOV/The Prague Post
Businesses that have strong-armed consumers with unfair practices are facing an old opponent that is finally starting to gain some muscle.
The Consumer Defense Association (SOS), a nonprofit organization focusing on defending customers against powerful businesses, has stepped up the pressure to remove unfair treatment from the market by taking individual complaints to court for the first time.
Its efforts seem to be paying off. Despite being on the scene since 1993, the SOS has started to earn more recognition recently. Customer inquiries to the organization more than doubled, from 15,494 cases in 2005 to 34,223 in 2006.
“People are increasingly inquiring about their rights in dealing with different business organizations, and we are trying to back their efforts as much as we can,” SOS spokeswoman Ivana Picková said.
Picková said the skyrocketing interest in consumer protection resulted mainly from a television ad campaign sponsored by the European Union that highlighted customer rights. The same campaign also ran in Slovakia and Slovenia.
“Czech people’s legal awareness, in terms of consumer protection, is rather low,” she said. “The campaign certainly helped catch more people’s eyes.”
Oddly, the organization saw its steepest increase in complaints coming in via its phone lines — the only SOS service for which consumers are charged.
“When launching the paid phone line back in 2002, we had some worries because we had provided all of our services free of charge until then,” Picková said. “But the recent steep rise confirmed that people are indeed increasingly interested in finding effective protection against powerful businesses.”
The image factor
SOS took four cases to court last year in which customers were suspected of being discriminated against — another breakthrough.
“Taking the cases before a court became a landmark in the fight for consumer protection,” said Filip Gregor, lawyer of the Ecological Law Service (EPS), a nonprofit organization that focuses on strategic litigation in the public interest law sector. The EPS provides legal backing to the SOS, and it cooperated on three of the four SOS lawsuits. “Until now, the right of consumer groups to sue companies before a court had not been exercised.”
In its first suit, in January 2006, the SOS challenged Czech Airlines’ gift vouchers, insisting that limiting the validity of the vouchers to six months was illegal. The court began dealing with the issue in December.
The group also challenged Santander Consumers financial company for allegedly having disadvantageous contract conditions. Most recently, it fought low-cost airline Sky Europe for allegedly misleading customers by failing to quote full ticket prices in marketing campaigns.
None of the cases in which the EPS participated has been decided.
Picková admitted that the slow pace of proceedings discourages many people from defending their rights in court.
“Most people will think twice before taking on a five-year legal challenge in which they’ll demand a 2,000 Kč [$93] refund for some bad shoes,” she said.
She added, however, the planned introduction of arbitration tribunals within two years should significantly speed up dealings and more lawsuits may be started.
Still, the media attention that such cases attract is worrisome for other companies, Gregor said.
“Major companies are quite powerful, and minor lawsuits filed by individuals do not concern them at all,” he said. “But a lawsuit filed by a consumer protection group that attracts media coverage raises their eyebrows because it harms their public image.”
Sky Europe spokesman Jan Čamek insisted that the SOS action was not justified and it unfairly singled out one company while the practice of not quoting taxes and other fees on airline tickets is common. And the allegation has the company concerned.
“The negative campaign led by the SOS is on the verge of harming our good business image,” Čamek said.
Money matters
As complaints to the SOS have increased, so has its funding. The rising concern over consumer protection contributed to an increase of the government subsidy from last year’s 5 million Kč to 6 million Kč this year. The SOS has 4,200 members, but just six employees.
The SOS also runs separate activities with other consumer protection organizations throughout Europe. In such cases, it is eligible to draw money from EU funds.
Money is also a major concern for the EPS. With the SOS, it is the most visible advocate of Czech consumer rights.
“Unlike regular law firms that make big profits, we must rely entirely on grants and donations,” Gregor said. “People who were ripped off by other businesses would hardly approach us if they were to risk further legal costs.”

František Bouc can be reached at fbouc@praguepost.com


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