Establishment of One-Stop Service Organization for Consumer Complaint in Thailand

Abstract

The objective of this thesis is to study about problems of the consumer protection processing in Thailand because there are several authorized departments in Thailand that supervised in different area of consumer protection depending on the category of goods and service. In addition, in Thailand, there are no regulations governing the standard of time to processing the remedies. In some case, there is only a minimal damage of loss which the spending of the time shall not be too long as the other case.

Another important reason of the weakness concerning enforcement of consumers’ rights is that there is no forum for consumers to voice their concerns, and no one provides consumers with the information and skills necessary to deal with advertising. Many people, particularly rural people, the poor, and the less-educated, the person lacking information and options when choosing products have to rely entirely on advertising.

There is a Consumer Protection Board establishing to support consumer whose the right was violated, but the agency has insufficient staff. Therefore, to help reducing that state agency's workload, and to put more effective on consumer remedy process, the author suggest establishing a department which has duties to receive consumer case and send it to the authorized department and also has the duties to follow up the case on behalf of consumer in reasonable time. Moreover, to reduce an amount of the consumer cases which is the petty case, an authority shall institute a new department entitled to settle the consumer case under Office of the Consumer Protection Board. An organization would be the obvious remedy to those limitations.

Consequently, if there is a legal action concerning the granting of power to the Consumer Protection Committee to resolve the disputes which is a small claim, the mediation will be performed in the same standard with clear criteria. The organizations will be directly responsible for Consumer Protection in Thailand in the future. Moreover, it is an advantage to both parties which are the consumers and the business operator, because it helps reducing consumers case filing to the court. The consumers will also get the fast and appropriate remedies in line with their own needs.

Keywords: Consumer Protection, Remedy, Alternative Dispute Resolution, Consumer Complaint