DNA, brings to its readers expert’s take, where experts from a variety of fields take questions and give ready answers to issues close to citizen’s heart. Our experts will take your questions and offer their expertise. Today we bring to you our expert’s take on consumer issues. I had purchased a Philips 50 Inch LED TV from More Megastore (Aditya Birla Retail Ltd), from Thane on 13th November 2015 with a five years warranty. Now there is a breakdown of TV. We complained to customer care number on June 26 and representative visited us on June 28, 2019. We were asked to pay Rs 1300 as service charge and were informed that TV would be taken to Soham Services in Vikhroli West, in a week and will be repaired in a day or two. We have been following up with them from July 8 onwards. They don’t receive calls.We had even mailed to Philips about this. But no satisfactory response from them.—Manish Ruparel On perusal of your cash memo and warranty card, it is evident that you are entitled to get the said TV repaired to your satisfaction. It is also implicit that such service needs to be rendered to you in reasonable time by the Philips dealer without any delay. If he is denying or delaying it for any reason, you need to put it on record by corresponding with the dealer. It is general experience that mere telephonic follow ups are not taken seriously by the service providers. In your case, it is more than a month and the dealer has not been able to deliver you your TV after necessary repairs. You should therefore communicate to him in writing (letter or email), with a copy to Philips company that if you don’t receive your TV properly repaired within next 4 days then you will be constrained to file complaint in consumer court claiming not only properly repaired TV but also compensation for depriving you & your family of the entertainment for more than a month. You should also note in such simple cases, you need not engage any professional advocate by incurring heavy expenses. Complainant can appear in person or he can authorise any other person capable of representing him before the consumer court. I had paid a private tuition class a fees of Rs 88,000 in July 2018 for two years for preparation of Engineering Entrance test for my daughter. However since the training facilities were not satisfactory, we informed the owner of class after four months about cancellation and demanded refund for the balance amount for the remainder period. However, the owner pointed out the condition that, ‘Fees once paid will not be refunded.’ However, after persisting on our demand, the owner agreed to refund only Rs 12,000. Since the class owner has collected entire two years fees in advance, he should at least refund me one year’s fee of Rs 44,000.— Harassed father The coaching classes are in habit of collecting fees for entire course period of two years. However, Supreme Court has ruled in ‘Islamic Academy of Education & anr v/s. State of Karnataka & other’ that fees for the entire course period, that is, for all the years cannot be charged upfront. Prescribed fee for only one semester or year can be charged. National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC) and other Consumer Courts have also directed refund in cases where students have cancelled their registration for justifiable reasons. You should therefore write to the class owner inviting his attention to above judgements and seek refund of your fees for the balance period. In case the class owner does not comply, you can file a complaint before the Pune District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum under Consumer Protection Act and seek the refund with interest thereon and also cost of litigation. (The author is Chairman of Mumbai Grahak Panchayat)

Stay updated with all the Mumbai Latest News headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.