It is extraordinary how things happen in this small but lovely country of ours. A fridge I had just bought broke down whilst still under guarantee. First the door just broke off by itself. Then the motor broke down again and again… and instead of being given a more serviceable fridge I ended up spending money, throwing away food again and again, appearing in front of the Consumer Claims Tribunal and in judgement being passed against me.
When I first reported the broken door I was asked to pay about €80 to have it repaired, and this whilst under guarantee. I refused to pay because of the guarantee and a friend repaired the door. Then when the motor broke down, I reported the case to the shopkeeper who later took the fridge and ‘repaired’ it. It then broke down again, he repaired again, and it broke down yet again. I then asked the shop owner to change this fridge because obviously it was a defective one. When he refused I took the case to the Consumer And Competition Division who said that they were to contact the shopowner. Later I received a note from this Division, stating that the shopkeeper had refused to change the fridge and that they had given me the option of lodging my case with the Consumer Claims Tribunal against a payment of €9.20. I took their advice and lodged my complaint with the Tribunal. In the meantime, I wrote also to the Consumer Affairs column of a local newspaper run by Adrian Muscat Inglott but my complaint never appeared in the paper.
After some time I received a note for the Tribunal sitting. During the meeting with the arbiter, I was called to appear alone along with the shopowner. I had brought my wife and my daughter as I was advised by the arbitration office that I could bring witnesses. Both had to take leave from work, but the secretary said, ‘we will call them later’ but of course didn’t do so. The shopkeeper then came up with the theory that the fridge began to break down because we had fixed the door of the fridge ourselves and not bought a new one (which was at around €85). On his part, the arbiter, instead of asking the shopkeeper why he hadn’t brought up this reason when the fridge broke down again and again, suddenly decided that the shopkeeper was to send the broken down fridge to my home and he, the arbiter would come to see the damaged door (I presumed with an expert technician) in a couple of days, and the sitting ended there without the witnesses being called up.
When more than four days had elapsed, I called the Tribunal and the brusque voice of the secretary told me that I had to wait my turn and hung up the phone. I tried again after two weeks but received the same answer with the same attitude. When I last called the Office of the Tribunal, the same roughshod voice of the secretary informed me that the arbiter will start his work again in September and I was to await my turn and would duly be informed. Days passed by and, one fine day in October I received a note under the signature of the arbiter that he had decided that the shopkeeper had no obligation to repair or change the fridge after ‘seeing’ that the damage was related to wrong use of the fridge by the complainant.
This, I feel, is a breach of justice because the arbiter took notice of only one party and based his judgement on this assertion, he did not come to check the fridge as agreed and didn’t take the opinion of the witnesses. What faith can one have in such a Tribunal, in consumer associations and the letters in the consumer columns of the newspapers?
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