Road less traveled x
By : Alexander Stocks
When Sylwia Dymek took her 7-month-old Rover to an authorized service station to fix an unremitting oil leak last year, she was told she was in danger of losing her one-year service warranty because she hadn't checked the oil frequently enough when the car was new.
"It was quite stressful for me I don't think they treated me right," the Allianz analyst programmer said of her five-month ordeal with the two authorized Rover service points in the Warsaw area.
To Dymek's relief, Rover finally agreed to replace her car's engine just before her warranty expired, but other consumers have had worse luck, especially with purchases that have fewer guarantees than a new car usually has.
A public relations professional who asked not to be named recently attempted to return a pair of shoes one of the heels had become loose three days after she purchased them. Beverly Hills, a small private boutique in Warsaw's Panorama shopping center, was not willing to consider a refund or replacement, she said.
"They told me, 'Look, We don't care. This is your fault. Take it away. Good-bye,'" she said. "I felt so abused. It made me feel so angry and so helpless. The people simply don't care."
The businesswoman contacted the Consumer Federation (FK), a Polish equivalent to the Better Business Bureau (BBB) in North America, but she said they were too bureaucratic and vague about her options so she decided not to pursue the matter.
Poland, like any post-communist society, is not known for its customer service, but that doesn't mean consumer advocacy is non-existent. In fact, it's alive and growing. Consumer Federation branches, other similar independent advocacy groups and small claims courts are springing up all around the country. At the same time, laws are being amended to bring the maturing democracy into harmonization with European Union (EU) directives.
Seller first philosophy
The reason customer service isn't better in Poland has much to do with merchants' lack of experience with capitalism and competition, said Katarzyna Gorecka, public relations director and spokeswoman for Galeria Centrum in downtown Warsaw. "They don't have any perspective," she said. "They don't even perceive what customer service is. I'm absolutely sure that the level of service is actually (spurred on) by the competition."
In the United States, sales clerks have been trained for aeons that "the customer is always right," even when they're not. Exchange and return policies, although not mandatory in many U.S. states, are often generous, sometimes allowing a month or longer to return defective merchandise or any goods that are simply no longer desirable.
In Poland, merchants are too worried about losing money in the short term to experiment with customer service, Gorecka said. She added that the bare-shelf 1980s, in which consumers were happy just to get their hands on any kind of product, left its mark on the customer-unfriendly policies that have survived to this day.
For its part, Galeria Centrum, a chain of department stores in Poland, offers clients five days to return just about anything they buy no questions asked, Gorecka said. After that, the product would have to be defective to merit a refund.
Other stores, usually hypermarkets and Western chains, offer similar policies. The French hypermarket Geant, for example, allows a five-day refund period to customers with receipts. Mustang and Big Star clothing stores offer similar return policies.
But to take back a dress, jacket or a pair of shoes purchased from a private boutique, the responses are likely to range from "no, go away" to "only after the product is sold to someone else" to "exchanges only." The same uncooperative approach also often goes for botched services.
Beware the dry cleaner
Just about everyone in Poland knows someone who has had clothing ruined or disappear from a dry cleaner. One Warsaw woman told the Business Journal that an evening gown she had worn one time was ruined at Renoma dry cleaner in Warsaw's Goclaw district. The owner, Ksawery Woronowicz, blamed the U.S. manufacturer of the dress's fabric and refused to cover even a fraction of the zl. 900 she had paid for the gown. The dress contained flowers made from a delicate fabric that became dislodged during the dry-cleaning process. Now, lawyers from the Consumer Federation have gotten involved. They said they felt reasonably certain that the woman would get her money back since the owner didn't acknowledge within 14 days a reclamation document she had submitted to him in accordance with Polish law.
Though all Consumer Federation spokespeople able to quote statistics were away on holidays as of press time, Regina Domurot, president of the Warsaw branch, said the federation's 50 outlets typically handle complaints about services such as flooring and ceramic tiling. Travel agencies also provide the federation with loads of dissatisfied customers such as when holidays don't meet expectations. Mail-order products are another. Shoes are definitely the most trouble-prone consumer article, Domurot added.
Another option for Polish consumers with claims under zl. 10,000, though many haven't heard about it yet, is the Permanent Consumer Courts of Conciliation (PSK). Since Jan. 1, 1999, through an amendment to trade-inspection law, small-claims courts are being set up and operated by Trade Inspection (IH), an executive body of Poland's Office for Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK).
At the beginning of this year, 18 PSKs and 17 local centers had received more than 3,700 complaints for products and services worth zl. 2.1 million ($488,000), according to UOKiK information. Of those, 1,714 cases involving mostly footwear, clothing, electronics, services and white goods were settled, with the average claim at zl. 600 and 60% of the cases involving footwear.
As in non-civil courts in other countries, both parties must agree to have a case settled in a PSK, which has been problematic in Poland as many merchants are reluctant to do so. Consumers pay 2% of the value of their claim in settlement fees.
In 1998 and 1999, approximately 500,000 consumers received free legal advice from the UOKiK, according to UOKiK information. Of those, approximately 400,000 sought help from the IH and UOKiK, with another 110,000 turning to non-governmental advocacy groups. Per Poland's overall budget for 2000, the UOKiK and IH received zl. 13.67 million ($3.17 million) and zl. 16.17 million ($3.76 million), respectively, for in-house expenditures.
Protecting the little guy
Another way consumer awareness is growing is through the work of consumer advocates. Appointed by municipal councils, these officials provide consumer advice, file lawsuits on behalf of consumers and campaign for customer-beneficial amendments to local regulations. More than 200 of these officials are already at work in Poland with more on the way, said Ewa Soliwoda, UOKiK's director of infrastructure development.
Both the UOKiK and IH field calls from consumers, offer advice and carry out informational and educational programs. The UOKiK pushes up the quality of goods by sending out the IH and non-governmental organizations to test products and publish results. It publishes consumer materials or commissions their publishing and recommends changes to legislation.
In 1999, the UOKiK gave the Consumer Federation and Association for Consumer Protection in Lodz (ZOK) zl. 1.55 million ($360,000) in funding for consumer-advice services. For educational brochures, it spent zl. 314,300 for work contracted to the Consumer Federation, SKP, Polish Economics & Household Society (PTEGD) and Consumer Quality Institute (KIJ). The same organizations received zl. 135,600 for testing of products and services and participating in other projects. Consumer advocate training cost the UOKiK zl. 265,000 in 1999.
Though not comparable in scale to the billion-dollar consumer advocacy campaigns of the West, spending increases yearly in Poland.
In addition, with market-driven competition gradually empowering Polish consumers and EU candidacy putting legislation on the fast track, a number of rights can already be counted on.
Every consumer is protected by a statutory guarantee, or rekojmia, which allows one year for the repair of a faulty or defective product and a full refund if the problem isn't fixed, according to information provided by the Consumer Federation. Even if a product carries a manufacturer's guarantee or warranty, a consumer has the right to claim rekojmia. If he or she opts for the guarantee, liability usually shifts to the producer or importer.
Recent changes to civil code place product liability on the producer when losses are incurred while using a product or when anybody is put in danger by a product, said Gracjan Pietras, an attorney with Dewey Ballantine.
Though consumers have no legal right to return a product that isn't somehow defective, certain recent legal acts afford consumers special exceptions in off-premise and long-distance sales, said Judith Gliniecki, an attorney with Hunton & Williams. Those doing business anywhere outside of an enterprise's premises have 10 days to change their minds. Salespeople conducting the sales must inform customers about this right and other information about their employers.
Those purchasing products at a distance via the internet, postal service, television, etc. have 10 days from the time the product is delivered to return it, Gliniecki said. These laws are meant to protect consumers from scam artists.
As for Poland's quickening campaign to join to the EU in 2003, government ministries are currently considering an EU-compliant draft act on competition and consumer protection that would regulate the status and financing of consumer organizations. Other acts on the parliamentary easel include several that meet EU directives for consumer goods and accompanying guarantees and consumer credits. The recent off-premise, distance and liability chapters added to Polish civil code also satisfy EU mandates.
Eventually, through the enactment of these and other laws, Poland will be in a position to assure and hopefully enforce a set of basic consumer rights that will put it on par with European shopping standards. But anybody who has ever shopped in Germany knows that Europe isn't exactly a consumer's paradise when it comes to customer service. And customer service, of course, can't be separated from the aims of consumer advocacy.
If Poland ever wants to compete with North America in that realm, it will take either a continued conversion to another way of thinking or the threat of losing customers to those who've already been converted to the customer-first ethos.
Tomasz Stepien
and Kamila Kujawska
contributed to this story
