Consumer is King » Case

Insurance company forced to pay compensation to consumer after not replying to a Right To Information Case

ashish — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 14:40:32 +0000

The Right To Information is a way of getting information from Government agencies that are not willing to provide the information when you would normally ask for it. Under the RTI Act, Government agencies are obliged to provide the required information unless there are specific security or personal privacy or commercial secrets involved. So what happens is that people who have business with a Government agency and are not getting the information from these agencies (something that can be very common) can use the RTI Act to get the required information; and if the information is not provided, a penalty is applied on the official concerned. Consider the case of this gentleman who needed to get information regarding his insurance policy and its premium payment (link to article):

MUMBAI: The Central Information Commissioner (CIC) has asked the United India Insurance Company Ltd (UIICL) to pay a compensation of Rs 5,000 to a citizen in a Right To Information case. Moreover, the commissioner has also imposed a penalty of Rs 22,000 on an official for dereliction of duty. In his order dated March 23, information commissioner A N Tiwari ordered UIICL to pay a compensation of Rs 5,000 to A M Attar—who had filed an RTI query—for the “detriment suffered by him’’ and also slapped a fine of Rs 22,000 on a senior divisional manager in Mumbai.
After a series of hearings, the commissioner said the senior divisional manager had got an RTI query on September 16, 2007. Though he had got the requisite information from the agent concerned on September 29, 2007, the information was forwarded to CPIO, regional office on Dec 27, 2007. Thus, there was a delay of 88 days on his part, the commissioner said.

Interior design forced to pay Rs 1 lakh penalty for not completing the work promised, forcing the hiring of another firm

ashish — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:28:40 +0000

When you are setting up a new shop or a new business with clients / consumers coming to visit the office or location, there is a need to ensure that the place is attractive and gives a good appearance. Getting the design to be attractive is very important, and it is equally important that the work to make the place attractive is done in time and as part of a integrated project. So, it is essential that whoever is charged with doing the interior design and re-structuring of an office or shop gets the work done in time, and to your satisfaction. So what happens when this work does not happen in time, or the firm doing this delays the work and finally gives up ? You will need to re-plan your schedule, and hire somebody else to get the work done, resulting in a lot of mental aggravation and agony; one client took this to the consumer forum and got compensation (link to article):

The Mumbai Suburban District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum this week ordered an architecture and interior designing firm to pay Rs 1 lakh to a shop owner for not executing work on time. Bhasin said after that she engaged S R Choudhary, a consulting architect, to assess the quality and quantum of work executed by the firm as well as the losses it caused her. In her complaint, she sought compensation for the losses and also demanded that the interior designers should pay her the money she had to give the other architect firm to complete the work.

Gurdeep Komalan and Associates argued that the delay was caused among other things, by “Bhasin’s unclear mind and her constant interference’’. They also blamed the weather, including the 26/7 flood for it, and denied that the architect, Sunil Komalan, would stay away and not supervise the work. However, the forum presided by J L Deshpande said there was no evidence that the plan was ever changed at the insistence of Bhasin, which pushed back the deadline.

This also means that whenever you have an interaction with an external firm, make sure that all status and changes are properly reserved and recorded.

Insurance company forced to provide insurance even when the disease was within a year of the policy (exclusion cause)

ashish — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 12:05:12 +0000

How many times have you seen that the insurance policy by an insurance company comes with certain conditions, mentioned in the small print. These are various sections that the insurance company will not cover, including when the person is indulging in adventure sports, goes in for risky activities, or in the case of life insurance policies, if the death is due to suicide or in mob action, or similar stuff. For medical policies, it is fairly common that many diseases are not covered in the first year of the policy, which is normally standard policy by the insurance company to cover themselves from people who know that they will need medical treatment soon, and thus want to go in for a policy to cover these costs. However, the insurance companies normally do not mention such exclusions prominently enough for people to understand and realize the impact of such exclusions. Now a state consumer forum has ruled that this clause was not valid since the consumer was not adequately informed of this exclusion (link to article):

The state consumer commission has directed an insurance company to pay medical expenses incurred by a patient within a year of taking a mediclaim policy even though the exclusion clause stated otherwise. The commission noted the insurance company was guilty of not bringing the exclusion clause to the notice of the policy holder while issuing the policy.
After his mediclaim was rejected by the company, the policyholder, Sushil Kumar, approached the Delhi district forum which directed it to pay Rs 1 lakh towards insured amount besides Rs 10,000 as compensation.

Bank fined for losing the property papers of a consumer, decision by National Consumer Forum

ashish — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 11:43:19 +0000

When you take a loan from a bank or a financial institution for the purpose of a house or a loan, the bank or institution would want to ensure that its ownership is retained till you pay off the loan fully. So, if you have taken a car loan, the RC papers says that the bank actually owns the vehicle, and once you are done with the loan, the bank will give you papers that will allow you to claim the registration back in your name. However, in the case of a loan for property, the bank may want to retain the original papers in its control until the loan is paid. In the case of these papers, these are official Government papers that are difficult to get a new copy made if they get lost for some reason. So what happens when you give these papers to the bank or financial institution and they lose these papers, and then deny that they ever had these papers ? Well, you better be sure that you have a receipt from the bank that they kept these papers, and then go to the consumer court to get back your rights (link to article):

The callousness of a nationalised bank in preserving the sale deed of a flat has cost the bank Rs 25,000. In a landmark order, the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC) directed Bank of Baroda to pay the amount to a Navi Mumbai resident for misplacing the original sale deed of his apartment. Janardhan B Kotian had given the sale deed of his Vashi apartment to Bank of Baroda while procuring the housing loan. “Being an employee of Bank of Baroda, I had applied for a housing loan from my bank itself to buy a Cidco plot. The bank agreed to give housing loan of Rs 2.35 lakh and I raised a loan of Rs 85,000 from HDFC Bank,” Kotian said.
“In November 2000, I wanted to sell the flat. I approached the bank and paid the entire loan amount with interest. I requested the bank to return the original sale deed but the bank said it was not traceable,” Kotian said. He said that though the bank said that they would give an NoC to CIDCO to go ahead with the sale transaction, he did not accept this as the prospective buyer was not inclined to purchase the flat. “I had to refund the advance of Rs 2.5 lakh I had taken from the prospective purchaser and even forced to take some money from a financier at 2% interest to pay him back the amount,” Kotian said.

In this case, what makes it even worse was that the person worked at the same bank; so consider what happened in those cases where the person was just a regular customer of the bank.