Being possessed of a Very Small Brain and being naive enough to think that they would help, I send a complaint off to the Office of Fair Trading regarding a certain well-loved Irish airline's habit of selling tickets for flights they have no intention of operating.
The reply I received reads in part:
Thank you for your email of ---- to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) regarding the alleged unfair business practices of the above named Company. You are concerned that....... sold you tickets for a route where flight travel would be cancelled as a result of a dispute with the local government concerning subsidy. By way of background, the primary duties of the OFT include the enforcement of competition law, and the application of consumer protection legislation in respect of matters that adversely affect the collective interest of consumers.
Aha I thought, "adversely affecting the collective interest of consumers..." that's me ! and a lot of others. But then I read on:
However, I must stress that the OFT has no power to intervene in individual disputes or seek redress on behalf of consumers, and therefore we are unable to assist you directly in this matter.
But surely every dispute amounting to "collective interest" is made up of individual disputes ?
Am I being stupid (probably yes, in expecting action) or can any JB-er elucidate ? Or do I have to gather a bunch of passengers who had their flights cancelled in order to prove "collective interest" ? Or has "collective" something to do with flying helicopters ?
These organizations OFT, OFWAT, OfGEN, OGAS all follow the prime directive, 'Do not rock the boat' and 'When in doubt do nowt' and each has a small framed sign on each of their desks that reads 'Always remember these people we oversee are allowed by law to steal from the customer' they are just well paid easy jobs for the boys and girls for the politicians to hand out for favors done or favors to be banked for future reference.
I was tempted to start with reply with a mean comment about dim-witted civil servants serving their time out to steal their gold plated pensions from the giant Ponzi scheme that is UK Government pensions.
But I won't.
Prof Drapes is right. The prime directive is to actually DO nothing. Especially nothing that might , just might, end up with someone noticing that you have done something. That would never do!
I had a very recent complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office. ICO. I do not know where they got their bureaucrats from. .................They read my complaint, they did not read the evidence submitted with it, they rang the Co., received a bunch of lies, and e-mailed me to tell me that there was no problem, and closed the file. No problem? These are Criminal matters!!!
Huh! Second complaint is now underway, as I re-submitted the complaint, high lighted the evidence, pointed out the lies, and asked for escalation. It went very quiet. If no result, it is off to the MP. I wondered what MPs do. I guess I will find out shortly.
...and a further thing. I complained to the OFT two years ago about a newspaper advertisement for a certain "hybrid" car and received a long letter from the OFT justifying the advert and talking about "gas mileage", "when filling up at gas stations" and many more Americanisms. The OFT's reply had obviously been copied straight from Toy..... whoops, from the manufacturer's press release - and from an American press release at that !
I'm assuming you mean the UK Office of Fair Trading.
I'm assuming you mean Ryanair which, by your own post, is an IRISH based airline.
Does anyone else see the issue regarding the influence of a UK "regulatory body" in respect of the decisions made by a company whose headquarters are outside the UK, with said decisions being made outside the jurisdiction of the UK OFT??
PS. The mpg claims of the Prius are set according to a "standard" set by the EU. They are not "fake", they are true. Just because nobody can actually drive the car in such a manner to achieve these figures is neither here nor there, the figures were achieved in a controlled test which was done under lab conditions on a rolling road and to the "standard" required by legislation from 2001. US mpg figures are actually more "realistic", since the tests are different, but since it is in the manufacturers interest to maximise the mpg no test is realistic in the real world. Sorry, but get over it.
lars. Hope the move planning is going well. on the criminal matters issue, if you hold,store, manipulate personal data in the UK but are not registered with the ICO, it is a criminal matter. However, I'm not at all sure that local plod will be interested. I think I need to await a final ICO judgement before they refer it to whoever they refer it to.........
...regarding a certain well-loved Irish airline's habit of selling tickets for flights they have no intention of operating.
If that's indeed Ryanair then you know its a "Caveat Emptor" outfit. Get over it and call it a lesson learnt. There's nothing to be gained by complaining to the Ministry of Silly Walks.
I complained to OFT years about Ryanair's practice of advertising flights at prices which were unattainable, as they did not include mandatory taxes etc, never mind the credit/charge card charges which could be avoided if you were the 0.0001 of the population who possessed a card issued by the Bank of Donegal for midgets with five surviving grandparents and one green eye and one blue one.
Their reply indicated that they were aware of the complaint and were looking into it. End of ......... the buggers still do it as far as I know, but I've never bothered to check again.
Location: Propping up bars in the Lands of D H Lawrence and Bishop Bonner
Age: 48
Posts: 5,734
Quote:
I complained to them about an ASDA Tv advert a few years ago.
Shouldn't you have complained to the Advertising Standards Agency?
The best way to get the OFT to take any action is to lobby an appropriate consumer group (i.e. Which) who can then take the matter further as they are deemed to be acting in a collective interest.
First step is to get their researcher to contact whoever it is you're complaining about.
They'll say "oh god, not that one, this nutter has been hassling us for ages, here's a copy of the file".
MP reads the incoherent letters in backwards sloping green ink that you've been sending to OFwhatever for the last seventeen years, and tells staff to write you a woolly letter in reply that doesn't say anything.
