CLOCKS

Regulator Wall

Consumer Focused Regulators

As a consumer I truly wish to have a guardian. I will be happy the guardian is a powerful and devoted one. For consumers, the guardians are the Regulators. What the regulators generally do? They put their focus on big picture and finally they end up by missing the routine pain and problems of the consumer. In all areas, we can find that the action in favor of consumers comes only after a long lag. To make the changes effective, it takes such a long time especially in our country. When it comes to enforcement, it remains as a huge issue. This keeps our country still in the developing state.

 

SEBI, which regulates the markets and mutual funds, has brought consumer oriented changes like modification of the IPO process (Initial Public Stock Offering), making compulsory commissions to mutual fund distributors and lot more. The IRDA, which is the insurance regulator, had moved the initial expense that consumers had to pay on the very popular ULIPs (Unit Linked Insurance Plans). TRAI, which is the telecom regulator, has published a quality of service audit for all mobile service providers. All the above measures indicate that the regulators have got good foresight on consumer issues. The changes on the financial market reveal that they have become safer and better over the years. The thing is that the regulators take such a long time to respond to the problems of the consumers. Theses problems were well known for years.

 

The corrective actions delay may be due to the way the regulators structure their priorities. Still we can find that there is a huge government-corporate and corporate-corporate war going on over allocation of new licenses and spectrum in 3G. In the current scenario, there are intelligent systems capable of classifying consumer complaints. The complaint pattern can easily be detected too. If the detections are made in time, the regulators will easily be in a position to move all by itself and that will not end with such a long delay. Unfortunately this does not happen now.

 

Another thing lies in the mandatory disclosure of all information's to the consumer. Just check the banks' websites; they will not disclose all their loan agreement information fully. Why cannot they post a standard loan agreement which clearly depicts all the rules on their websites? Let it be a car/ home/ personal loan, they can put it clearly so that consumers can read it and can have all the clarifications with the bank staffs. In the same manner, why insurance companies can't disclose their percentage of claims they pay in their websites?  They can provide all the finest details of each policy in their sites so that consumers can easily download that. We can find a huge unregulated space in these areas.

 

Consumers similarly have to struggle a lot in the real estate area. They usually get delayed in plot allotment.  They purely get cheated upon some real estate terms like built-up area, carpet area etc. Built up area is the area of the apartment that includes the area covered by the walls. Carpet area does not include the area of the walls. Now-a- day's real estate traps are increasing. Why no one has time to react or listen to such kinds of issues? If the small aspects at the consumer level are addressed initially, we can definitely remove the source of large number of consumer complaints.

 

It is just about a mechanism where all the data can be used to identify the areas about which the consumers have more complaints. Then concentrating on those specific areas can help to resolve the problem to a great extent. Another solution is to set up a body which can record all the complaints and classify them accordingly. They can easily identify the weak areas. Since they have all the information they can easily pursue the appropriate regulator to plug the gaps found. They can pursue the ministry or department also.

The body can also devise a mechanism which electronically tracking the status of the consumer complaints. This can be done till the time the complaint is resolved or until the disputing parties agree to fight it out in court. The consumer organizations and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) also can interact with it. To make it effective the regulators can outsource it to a body, if they are not in a position to focus on it by themselves. The public need robust and decisive regulators, at the moment regulators are seen to act slowly when it comes in to protecting consumer.

 

About the Author

I am Sreelakshmi Bibinraj working for consumerdaddy website. We write many blogs and articles to create consumer awareness. Consumerdaddy is a leading consumer protection portal in India with consumer reports for over 40,000 companies and 200,000 products.

what does "R/A" stand for...?

... regarding German R/A Regulator wall clocks (such as made by Junghans)?

Retard / Advance

When the clock is running fast or slow, you can make an adjustment to "advance" it or "retard" it. There should be an indicator needle between the two extremes of the A/R gage. There should also be a screw that can be adjusted to move that needle (and the end of the hairspring)

Vienna regulator wall clock restoration, March 2011

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 30th, 2011 at 8:52 pm and is filed under collectibles clocks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.