http://frugalways.co.uk/life.php?disp=comments en-GB http://backend.userland.com/rss 60 Sun, 11 Mar 2012 23:31:55 +0000 A Trading Standards Officer [Visitor] c845@http://frugalways.co.uk/ As far as I am aware Hampton doesn't give a business a green light to do whatever it wants when its classed as complaint. What Hampton aims to do is prevent unnecessary inspections. For example, if your local butchers is visited this year and is found to be compliant with all laws then Hampton says that that business should not be visited again without some form of risk assessment that justifies it or when it is shown to be non compliant (i.e. on consumer complaints). What Hampton aims to prevent is lots of regulators visiting a business when there is no indication they are doing anything wrong. As I have implied, budgets are more likely to push this forward now anyway as there are not enough officers around to do the necessary visits anyway – so any way of doing less will be welcomed. Generally speaking is lots of complaints are received about a business, action should be taken, but it depends on the nature of the complaint. Most TS departments work in this way now – so it means that resources are focussed on problem areas. It is not just about complaint numbers though, action can be taken on 1 or 2 complaints where there has been a serious loss to the consumer. Quite often these tend to be doorstep crime incidents when someone has been conned out of £10,000. As I have said previously, just being classed as compliant does NOT prevent enforcement action being taken – but what Hampton probably does mean is that is a company cocks up but then shows willingness to comply with the law then enforcement action would probably be considered heavy handed. Big companies are difficult to regulate for a whole host of reasons. There are also issues with the way TS is set up that hinders the regulation of these big companies that operate cross border – that is currently being addressed. What we really need is a national regulator – a bit like the OFT but one with a more wider remit to take on cases regularly, which the OFT doesn’t seem to do.<br /> ]]> http://frugalways.co.uk/life.php/trading-standards-are-doing-nothing-about-supermarkets#c845 Sun, 11 Mar 2012 12:45:17 +0000 valueformoney [Member] c844@http://frugalways.co.uk/ I agree, should we punish business for failing to comply with the law or assist businesses to comply with the law is definately the issue. But doing the latter - as successive governments want for all regulators and enforcement bodies - is failing the consumer on a huge scale. Similar to Greece leaving the euro, there is no mechanism for them leaving, in the same way, once a corporate business is deemed to be "compliant" with the regulator, there is no way that it can be removed. I could issue a valid complaint against asda everyday for a year and it would not lose its "compliant" status and the benefits it receives from trading standards etc, because of it. Hampton has allowed businesses to achieve a position whereby they can dismiss consumers out of hand. It may allow for TS to save huge amounts in its budget, but its costing consumers huge amounts instead. When a person cancels a contract with a phone company and the company continue to take money from their account for 3 months after, that person shouldn't have to spend hours on the phone and writing letters, waiting months to get their money back. Many people are living week to week or month to month, this is money they need to live on. How many are being hit with bank charges for going over their overdraft limits because of action like this? What are enforcement bodies doing to get this money back? or prevent it happening to others? With regulation and enforcement the way it is now, I would easily recommend that individuals avoid all regulators and enforcement bodies and take their issue straight to their local court if they want a fair, open decision on their issue with a business. "I think different regulators need to act in different ways depending on the industry, seriousness of the issue and size of the business" - again, I agree. Sadly with the hampton principles being enforced across the board, it cant happen. If hamton failed in the regulation of banks (which we are all paying for so didn't save the people anything) why is it acceptable for energy companies, supermarkets and other big businesses? Thanks again for your input. http://frugalways.co.uk/life.php/trading-standards-are-doing-nothing-about-supermarkets#c844 Sat, 10 Mar 2012 18:46:43 +0000 A Trading Standards Officer [Visitor] c843@http://frugalways.co.uk/ Essentially its a question of whether a regulator should be nasty and aggresive and punish failure to comply with the law or assist businesses in complying with the law and only punish those who continualy breach the law. We are moving towards the latter. For exmaple, we provide lots of free advice to business to make them comply with the law, and at the end of the day that is what we want to achieve and it saves huge amounts of money (that we don't have) prosecuting every non compliant business. I would say that we have gone a bit soft on the aggresive side and certainly there is huge variance between TS departments. I think different regulators need to act in different ways depending on the industry, seriousness of the issue and size of the business. Hampton doesn't prevent action being taken against a business breaching the law. The main issue in the exmaple you have given about ASDA is that the law itself doesn't lend itself to an easy prosecution (or maybe not a prosecution at all). I don't think we will ever move back to that aggresive enforcement type of regulation anytime soon. There are lots of good points to 'workign with' businesses but there needs to be a balance and I agree YES loans should have been taken down much sooner.I wouldn't necessarily just blame the OFT. They are subject to all sorts of political pressure as well as legal barriers. http://frugalways.co.uk/life.php/trading-standards-are-doing-nothing-about-supermarkets#c843 Fri, 09 Mar 2012 19:04:43 +0000 valueformoney [Member] c841@http://frugalways.co.uk/ It sounds like I am singling out trading standards, but I am not. Just posted today the first in a series about hampton principles. Examples of damage being done by the way it has been implemented across the board are too numerous for any website to post about. As will be shown in the next installment. Lets be clear here - a regulator is in place to make sure that which ever market they work in, that businesses comply with the law. Since hampton, regulators and enforcement bodies are spending too much time working with business. Even training modules for regulators are to be written by business. Yes loan company - is a good example. Their license was taken away and rightly they can appeal. However, they have been under investigation since 2009. Is almost three years acceptable for a company to prove they are complying with the law? Businesses shouldnt be given anytime to put things right. They should be warned and then inspected again within a month, if the same problems continue to happen then remove their credit license. Hampton has other damaging factors. In the case with asda I posted here, asda broke the law, bait advertising, misleading pricing, not publishing any corrections to the 29,000 customers that they advertised to via twitter. Due to Hampton, asda wont even have this recorded as a complaint against them. It is a single person complaint, not a super complaint from a large customer body, or a media outrage, etc. Unless thousands register the identical complaint then its swept under the carpet. I fail to see how they can have a status in regulation and enforcement bodies of "compliant" when they are clearly breaking the law? Even more worrying is the october 2011 consultation paper that the present government plans for regulation/enforcement! They want to take hampton even further, data sharing between government and corporate businesses. It's dangerous for want of a better word. Under the hampton principles, a regulator/enforcement body cannot act against a business if it is "against the needs of the business" in that the action will cost business more money. In the next post on hampton, just have a look at how the financial ombudsman service is ruling against customers due to the extra costs involved in retraining an FSA training and auditing company, which clearly mis sold PPI, but were saved from paying out a refund because it would have undermined and cost the business had the award gone against them. "risk based assessment" [using hampton's principles] is - and I quote - "flawed" Not my words, the words of the FSA's own report into the bailout and failings of regulation and enforcement when RBS had to be bailed out to the tune of £45 Billion. This outweighs any "estimated" cost savings included in the hampton report. If the financial services authority deem hampton principles and risk based assessment do not work and are disastrous, then why on earth do successive governments have them in place across the board? one can only assume, is to the benefit of corporate business donors to their respective political parties. http://frugalways.co.uk/life.php/trading-standards-are-doing-nothing-about-supermarkets#c841 Fri, 09 Mar 2012 17:47:01 +0000 A Trading Standards Officer [Visitor] c840@http://frugalways.co.uk/ I see that you are quite critical of Hampton on Twitter. I have to say that there are many good aspects to Hampton - the bottom line is that you focus your resources on where there are issues and avoid burdening businesses with inspections. I think what is more important than Hampton is resources. Departments do not have resources to deal with every single business or complaint ,so it makes sense to focus on those issues with a lot of complaints and those businesses that do NOT comply with the law when they are told to. One of the things the Hampton report helped prevent was unnecessary inspections on businesses - i.e you shouldn;t waste time inspecting a busines sunless there was a reason. Whilst we might love to have the resources to check every business every year we simply don't. So even if we didn't have Hapton to osme etent we would (and should) do risk based regulation. The issue really is that the sanctions we have are took weak or take too long carry out. A good exmaple is the OFT closing down Yes Loans. I think it has been known for a long time that they were dodgy, but you cannot revoke their licence without giving them a chance to change their ways and they also have an appeals process. I do not think the Government want to give us pwoers that allow us to close down or fine businesses without having to go through a court (and rightly so I spose!) but until that changes or the Court process becomes quicker then we wil lalways have big delays in sorting stuff out. I do not think Hampton is stopping effective regulation. What stops effective regulation is number of staff and how aggresive a department is. There is nothing in Hampton that stops you taking on a company that is wrong doing. It is more to do with resources and how aggresive the regulator wants to be and how aggresive they are allowed to be. Don't forget that TS are aprt of Councils and subject to political interference. For exmaple, some departments are not allowed to force businesses to use metric emasurements- even though that is the law. The Council doesn't want the bad press. http://frugalways.co.uk/life.php/trading-standards-are-doing-nothing-about-supermarkets#c840 Sun, 04 Mar 2012 14:10:11 +0000 valueformoney [Member] c836@http://frugalways.co.uk/ First off Mr Trading standards officer, I want to thank you for your comments, which have been a valuable resource and a welcomed insight into how trading standards operate. They have led me on a path to connecting differing problems with businesses in different areas, which until your replies, I have not been able to connect. Extensive reading of legislation, consultation documents, etc, have revealed far more than I believed possible. This issue and your comments on it, will be leading to a series of posts, in the coming days all will be made clear. As regards Trading standards not acting against Asda, my post is valid I feel, without saying too much at this stage, Trading standards have their hands tied as you state. Consecutive governments have seen to this. The trading standards officer I spoke with informed me that they are able to and carry out occasional "spot checks" on asda and other businesses, this I have since discovered is not the case. Government legislation, whilst preventing trading standards from acting on my behalf in this case, was consulted on. Top brass within trading standards could have seen this coming and voiced opposition to it, they have the ear of governments via the LBRO, and were one of the previous government's "stakeholders" but went along with what was being proposed. Despite the legitimate and true reasons that you state, the fact remains that trading standards are doing nothing about supermarkets. Please check back to the site for a series of posts, over the next couple of weeks, which had it not been for your input here, would not have been possible. I would value your views and input on them. One thing about frugal ways, is that comments are always anonymous if the poster so wishes. I take pride in the fact that the site does not do group emails, cannot be bought or linked from by opportunist websites and is not out to create a source of income. I would however welcome you as an anonymous guest poster on the website. I have no need to know anything about you personally and if you would like to do any guest posts please scroll down to the bottom of the page and email me directly, I guarantee anonymity. Thanks again. http://frugalways.co.uk/life.php/trading-standards-are-doing-nothing-about-supermarkets#c836 Mon, 27 Feb 2012 19:38:29 +0000 A Trading Standards Officer [Visitor] c832@http://frugalways.co.uk/ I wasn't involved in TS before the 2008 regs came in so I am not altogether familiar with the old leigslation. But yes, before there were lots of rules that said you can do this or you cannot do that. The 2008 Regs take a much more general approach and say you shouldn't mislead but they rarely give specifics. Most consumer laws has statutory defences built in, its nothing unusual. http://frugalways.co.uk/life.php/trading-standards-are-doing-nothing-about-supermarkets#c832 Sun, 26 Feb 2012 23:58:20 +0000 valueformoney [Member] c831@http://frugalways.co.uk/ From what I've read so far, it appears that the CPR 2008, has replaced many other consumer protection acts, stating [in the summary put before parliament, before the new act became law] that the consumer protection clauses in the old acts, are to be "generally" covered in the new act. On inspection of the CPR 2008, these assurances given appear to be misleading, as many of the clauses protecting the consumer have been left out. The "item must have been priced at the higher price for 28 days in the same outlet, before its lower price can be called a sale" clause, is a typical example of missing consumer protection from the new act. Also, the new act [CPR 2008] includes clauses which state businesses can use in its defence, if they are found to be in breach of the new act. Would this be a fair representation of the CPR 2008 in your view? I'm reading the Hampton report as this points to an across the board, same as, way of operating, for all regulators and enforcement bodies, whether it be a regulator or an ombudsman, This interests me also, as it would explain failures with the financial ombudsman service. I'm still reading before I make changes to this post, thanks again for your input. http://frugalways.co.uk/life.php/trading-standards-are-doing-nothing-about-supermarkets#c831