'Don't kill Consumer Focus' blog discussion

brightpenny

Consumer Focus was set up with the remit of campaigning for Consumers. Direct Action is the remit of other agencies.

It is interesting to note though that the npower refund story breaks when Consumer Focus is under threat.

In this financial climate the campaigning should not be carried out by government bodies using tax payers money - lets get rid of the deficit first

SimpleDave_2

brightpenny wrote: »

In this financial climate the campaigning should not be carried out by government bodies using tax payers money - lets get rid of the deficit first

I'm confused, are you saying that tax payers money was poorly spent getting £70m refunds for npower customers? Or that someone else should have done it, in which case who? ofgem clearly failed

Bill_Davy

brightpenny wrote: »

I agree that Consumer Focus has played its part in some way, however it IS a huge Quango and do we really public money to pay for an organisation set up to campaign for consumers?

Surely it should be for government to ...

Who knows - businesses may actually have to listen to CUSTOMERS!

Um. Like those lovely politicans who promised to make Equitable Life equitable? Very often, politicians are the "enemy".

And I do wonder if political lobbying is not more powerful most of the time than public opinion. It is certainly less transparent which is suspicious in itself.

Premier_2

If I remember correctly, Consumer Focus was originally set up following the amalgamation of those two very similar (NOT!) watchdogs, energywatch and postwatch.

Not sure what postwatch achieved (only because I'm not too interested, they may well have done some very good work in the past), but I know energywatch were certainly a thorn in the side of many in power, making several complaints probably most notably the supercomplaint about poor, inaccurate, sometimes non-existent billing by energy companies for prolonged periods resulting in huge debts for consumers. This resulted in the ERA issuing a code of conduct for it's subscribers and which included the 12 month back billing rule.

Consumer Focus, I understand, is also continuing the trend of complaining on behalf of the consumer for these two so closely related industries (yeah, right!) the energy supply and postal services.

So what better thing for the government to do than to disband this bunch of government funded trouble makers?
Lets now replace them with trading standards and the independent charity based CAB?

Ah yes, trading standards....Unfortunately, they too were hit with cutbacks a few years ago. Lots of local offices were closed and their role was not to deal direct with the public anymore.
(Our local office that was in our town was closed down, nearest office is now over 50 miles away! ... and they won't deal with individuals unless they contact you first via referral)

That's what Consumer Direct was created for; a government funded organisation that provided advice to individuals not only where trading standards once did, but in general for almost anything (like benefits, etc)

What, A government funded organisation telling the public how to get their hands on government funded benefits they are entitled to? :eek: So, I understand they are going too...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11540624

That leaves the CAB which are not government funded, and are extremely stretched as it is, often dealing with peoples debt issues. In my experience, whereas once you could walk into a CAB office and get almost any advice you wanted immediately, nowadays you need an appointment, usually for a couple or three weeks ahead (by which time any reason I had to contact them would probably have been over anyway), and nowadays they usually just give you details of where to get extra information from rather than actually helping with the issue. (This is not the case for those in debt where I am led to believe they do an excellent job, if you can get them to help you ... they are so stretched even now, sometimes they struggle)
So I'm not sure how CAB are supposed to take on all this extra workload.:huh:

Still, the government won't be paying and if it wasn't for the huge deficit left by the previous government, DC/NC wouldn't have to be slashing cutting public spending by so much (... so they keep telling us.) They blame GB ... and I suspect will continue to do so right up 'til the next election, and perhaps beyond if you vote 'em back in ... not that there's much competition at present.

MSE_Martin

The real worry here about moving things to CAB and trading standards is

1. CAB (which i'm a HUGE fan of) is already underfunded and going to have its funding cut. It's expertise is giving advice to consumers - researching policy and policymaking is not what it does - so now on a lower budget (even incorporating any money it gets for this) it will need do the same job.

Plus CF is a quango - a funded organisation - CAB is a charity with a group of members. IT is primarily decentralised about local bureau

2. Trading standards does not focus on national issues - nor does consumer direct.

We're left with a massive lacuna in the system - who will look at the big issues. Of course Which? and MSE and CAG. Yet they're not govt funded - frankly I'm already stuck when people say "why didnt you investigate, why didnt you do anything" - in a way we were criticised over the Npower gas issue (in actual fact we liased with CF and as they were doing it didnt bother)

Yet we don't have the resources do dedicate at looking at every issue - its not what we do - and to expect a private sector solution to a public problem - in a highly letigious area is blinkered and bonkers if I'm honest.

thisisace

MSE_Martin wrote: »

We're left with a massive lacuna in the system

Been playing Scrabble again? :rotfl:

jamesd

How do the budgets for these bodies compare to the MSE visitor count and the MSE Charity revenue? I'm wondering what the potential is to have donations from MSE users become a significant funding source for CAB or other organisations.

It's perhaps of interest that the January 2009 Wikimedia Foundation fundraiser took in at least US$6.2 million from 125,00 donors and the 2010 one over US$8 million from 240,000 donors. All from donors who had no compulsion at all to donate.

I see that the MSE Charity made a donation to one of the local CABs, Plymouth, which I assume will see more demand as a result of defence cuts. Anyone who wanted to donate money to Plymouth CAB in addition to what the MSE charity did could do that online easily for as little as £1 if they have a card. Perhaps there's scope for MSE to feature such links periodically in some way that seems suitable? Perhaps the National CAB could have a donation option that would split donated money pro-rata among the local offices based on their usage, so just one link could do the job?

It's perhaps also of interest that Google made a US$2 million grant in 2010. Those in the financial services industry already fund some bodies and there may be scope for others.

What is the revenue from a breakfast TV phone/online quiz? Is there useful potential to have one where half of the money is used for a prize and half for a donation, split between bodies in proportion to the callers selecting each?

I think that there's a fair chance that MSE now has a sufficiently large base of users to make some significant difference in this area just by providing how to donate information to its audience. Perhaps try a little test marketing to see what the result is with a Give a Pound to Your Local CAB feature? Deliberately a Pound, low enough to be affordable to many without much thought and CAB because it has excellent brand recognition and is most likely to be successful.

short_bird

Premier wrote: »

If I remember correctly, Consumer Focus was originally set up following the amalgamation of those two very similar (NOT!) watchdogs, energywatch and postwatch.

Not sure what postwatch achieved (only because I'm not too interested, they may well have done some very good work in the past), but I know energywatch were certainly a thorn in the side of many in power, making several complaints probably most notably the supercomplaint about poor, inaccurate, sometimes non-existent billing by energy companies for prolonged periods resulting in huge debts for consumers. This resulted in the ERA issuing a code of conduct for it's subscribers and which included the 12 month back billing rule.

Consumer Focus, I understand, is also continuing the trend of complaining on behalf of the consumer for these two so closely related industries (yeah, right!) the energy supply and postal services.

I believe Ofwat were due to become a part of Consumer Focus last year.

meggsy

http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_digitalassets/@dg/@en/documents/digitalasset/dg_191543.pdf


No longer an NDPB - Government will consider the outcome of ongoing sectoral reviews and consult early next year on proposals to abolish Consumer Focus and transfer its function to Citizens Advice

Terrylw1

Before they look towards axeing CF, there should be someone in government able to read a paper who sees the total failings of Ofgem.

In my opinion, Ofgem have always been a very poor regulator. Suppliers can get away with so much and have a chuckle about Ofgem because, just like with Elexon, they know they will do very little.

We need someone to investigate what part Ofgem really pays, why they take so little action and if CF should go, how we replace them in terms of these issues. Removing CF, will just send a message to Suppliers that it's back to "the good old days" with Ofgem.

Elec is extremely poorly regulated in many ways. I think consumers would be veyr surprised how much goes on inside this industry which is never made public e.g. the vast waste of these companies that puts the prices up...not just the cost of the energy they buy. Someone should be instructing these companies to reduce waste to bring costs down which is standard to some industries...not this one.