No price control in liberalised marketplace

I received a letter from a lady on prices. I am often asked questions by consumers on this issue and, from a consumer education point of view, this case is well worth sharing with consumers.

This lady bought a handbag for Lm40 from an outlet and later saw an identical handbag priced at Lm26.95 in another outlet. Subsequently, she sent a letter to the outlet from where she bought her handbag, demanding a refund and copied me in.

This is not the first time I received such a complaint. In such situations, the buyer has no right whatsoever to any refund. Basically, we are operating in a liberalised marketplace and it is up to consumers to shop around for the best bargain.

Here are some excerpts from the letter the consumer sent to the shop from where she bought the handbag:

I would like to complain about a handbag purchased from your outlet on December 10, 2006, as reflected in the enclosed receipt.

The selling price for this handbag (a brown leather Valentino handbag) was Lm45 but was sold to me for Lm40. While at first I thought this was a good purchase, I happened to visit another shoe and bag shop in the area. They were selling an identical bag for a much lower price, i.e. Lm26.95.

Since I thought it was quite unfair that you should be selling an identical bag at a much higher price, I returned personally to your outlet where I asked your salesgirl to get in touch with you so that you could refund me the difference in price.

The day after, your salesgirl got in touch with me asking me to visit your outlet to collect the difference in price. However, on the evening of the same day you called me up saying that you had no intention of refunding the difference.

On hearing this, I told you that I would get in touch with Mr Adrian Muscat Inglott, who writes a weekly Consumer Affairs column in The Sunday Times for further action. Your reply was that, if I took such action, you would take me to court.

In my opinion this was a very unjustified reaction and such threats are not stopping me from copying this letter to Mr Muscat Inglott.

I am hoping that such action will result in the refund of the difference in price as already requested.

On having received the above letter I called the lady in question and I explained to her that we are operating in a liberalised market-place in which prices are not fixed. So while traders can compete with each other on price, consumers ought to shop around and take their custom to those traders who give them the best deals and value for money.