The European Union has made consumer protection a cornerstone of its social and economic strategy. In some northern EU countries consumers are treated with much more respect than is the case in other countries which, despite their good intentions, fail to put consumers first.

Some 250 consumers have filed official complaints with the police against Fantasy Tours – a travel agency that shut its doors just in time to deprive its customers of their well-earned holidays for which they had paid about €400,000 in advance. These consumers reported the case to the Malta Competition and Consumer Affairs Authority. They rightly expect to have their money back plus compensation and, perhaps more important, they want action to prevent such cases in future.

Of most concern is that this is not the only alleged breach of consumers’ rights. Despite having all the right processes in place, it seems that consumer protection regulators are not delving deep enough into the substance of service providers’ abuse against consumers and seem to concentrate more on legal niceties.

There are, for instance, still a number of significant mis-selling complaints against certain financial services providers that are still unresolved. This is totally unacceptable in the context of an official EU-wide strategy to put consumers first.

The police now need to decide how to act on the complaints they received from aggrieved Fantasy Tours customers. For any legal action to be taken, one must first determine whether the alleged breach of contract between Fantasy Tours and its customers is a civil or a criminal act.

Sadly some businesses do fail despite not getting involved in any criminal activities. In such cases aggrieved consumers can only hope to get compensation through civil action in court. So the Fantasy Tours aggrieved customers have to wait until this legal issue is clarified.

Much more can and needs to be done to prevent such cases from becoming too frequent. Businesses rarely fail overnight. There are usually clear warning signs that should alert consumer protection agencies to act in defence of common people who are not necessarily well informed on what may be going on in businesses they deal with on a daily basis.

It was reported, for instance, that Fantasy Tours’ licence to operate was renewed for three consecutive years even though the company had not paid the Malta Tourism Authority fees. Should this not have been a sign that not all was well with the running of this travel agency?

The lesson that needs to be learned from this incident is that consumer watchdogs should be given the teeth to bite in order to prevent consumers losing money. Putting in place bureaucratic processes to handle complaints after alleged breaches of consumers’ rights is simply not enough. Regulators who have direct responsibility to protect consumers need to look at substance when investigating consumers’ complaints.

Many consumers argue that this is not being done thoroughly enough.

In the case of travel agencies that are allowed to ask for advance payments from customers, tighter regulation is needed to ensure that such payments do not go into the kitty of the company without sufficient safeguards to ensure that if the service promised is not in fact delivered, the consumer will have a right to have his money back.

Consumers’ dreams of a fantastic holiday should never turn into a nightmare, and it is unacceptable that they still do.