Recently, I was talking to one of my colleagues who was mis-sold his mobile phone contract. Interestingly enough, I stumbled across a research carried out by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in the UK which suggested that more than 9% of all consumers were mis-sold products or services in recent past.
Several questions emerged in my mind:
1. If mis-selling is so prevalent, what actions are we taking to avoid such things from happening?
2. How and what do we define as mis-selling?
3. If the salesperson (in retail setting where they are selling 100s of products) is unaware about certain attributes of the product or service, is it really mis-selling?
4. When you got aware that you were mis-sold, what actions did you take personally?
5. What factors affected your actions?
6. Was the total monetary impact important for your action (for example, if the mis-selling required you to pay a small amount to rectify the problem did you complain)?
7. What kind of complain did you do?
8. Did the supplier agree that you were mis-sold?
9. Did you think about the legal option? If so, did you take that option? If you did not take it, why not?
I would really be interested in knowing your stories of how you were mis-sold a product or service. Please share.
Dr. Shukla, I was mis-sold a mobile phone contract too. They kept me in a limbo for nearly a week (carphone warehouse and t-mobile). One kept on asking to talk to other and it just went on and on. There is so much hidden in this contracts, it is impossible to fathom.
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I found your site on del.icio.us and really liked it.. i bookmarked it and will be back to check it out some more later. I have been mis-sold quite a few items however I must say that most times it’s to do with small-ticket items and therefore I have hardly ever taken any actions. I just take it with a pinch of salt and move on. Why to spend time on something which is hardly going to make any difference.
Yes. The mis-selling most times happens in technology products. Ignorance is not bliss anymore, is it? They are the new sharks who wish to eat our money as much as they can.