Repair beyond the bounds of the law: the main schemes of abuse in the provision of maintenance services are named

When buying a car, refrigerator, laptop, smartphone, or other expensive equipment, we usually expect to use it for a long time, and not until the first breakdown. The Consumer Protection Law gave us this right by obliging the manufacturer to ensure that the product can be used during its service life and establishing that “for this purpose, the manufacturer ensures the repair and maintenance of the product, as well as the release and delivery to trade and repair organizations as necessary… the volume and range of spare parts during the production period of the product and after its removal from production during the service life of the product, and in the absence of such a period, within ten years from the date of transfer of the product to the consumer.”

Not only consumers, but also manufacturers of branded goods are interested in this. Branded maintenance and repairs during the warranty period maintain the brand’s reputation and ensure control over product quality. And the production of spare parts and post-warranty service provide income comparable to revenue from the sale of main products. Therefore, manufacturers not only create their own branded service centers, but also protect them to the best of their ability from competitors – independent service organizations and private craftsmen, to whom they deny legal access to their repair and operational documentation and authorized spare parts.

However, after the warranty period expires, this protection is of little help. It is known, for example, that over 80 percent of cars after the warranty period are repaired by their owners in independent services, often called garages for their typical location. However, relatively small initial investments in their business and intense competition allow them to attract consumers due to the significantly lower price of their services. As for their quality, it is influenced by the availability of acceptable spare parts and technical documentation from manufacturers. Unfortunately, in Russia, unlike other developed countries, manufacturers are not required to provide access to such documents to everyone who sells and repairs their products. Nevertheless, they find them, as well as spare parts, although not always quite legally.

But in recent years, citizens have become less likely to update durable equipment, and this has increased the demand for repairs. At the same time, the departure of global brands and the shortage of qualified specialists have significantly reduced the supply of such services. As a result, the after-sales service system, which more or less met the needs of the population for equipment repairs, began to burst at the seams.

I judge this from citizens’ appeals to public consumer associations and regional departments of Rospotrebnadzor. For example, in the capital region, complaints about deception when receiving repair services have become the most widespread category of consumer complaints.

The most noticeable are two patterns of abuse in the provision of repair services. The first, for home repairs, is practiced by fake “repair services” that are widely advertised via the Internet, flyers in mailboxes and bulletin boards. In reality, these are call centers that collect consumer requests and transfer them to private specialists. The consumer cannot control the accuracy of the statements of such a specialist about identified defects and replaced parts, the quality of his spare parts and work. And the call center does not control all this and is not responsible for either the result of the repair or its price, and refers the dissatisfied consumer to the same repairman.

However, if the master does not want to, neither the consumer nor anyone else, including the court, will force him to correct the unsuccessful repair or return the money paid for it. The consumer will not be able to prove his guilt, even if he attracts experts, whose services, by the way, are also not cheap. In addition, many craftsmen have self-employed status or do not have any official status, and the consumer protection law does not yet apply to such workers.

When a consumer contacts a repair shop, another deception scheme is typical. Here he is first told an acceptable cost of repairs, and when he agrees and leaves his item, he is soon informed that in-depth diagnostics have revealed a number of other faults and the cost of repairs may increase significantly. The consumer is forced to agree, since he needs the device, he cannot check the service, and if he refuses, he will have to pay for diagnostics and there is a risk of getting his item back with replaced scarce parts. Which is completely unpunished – no one will be able to establish in what condition the product was handed in for repair.

These schemes are typical not only for technology. I saw a very similar picture in a recent study by one online publication. Journalists decided to look into complaints about veterinarians offering their services online at home for only 500 rubles per visit. Those who invited them write that 500 rubles is the fee for a specialist to enter the apartment, and each of his subsequent actions has a separate price: palpation of the kidney – one thousand rubles, taking the temperature – one and a half. The final amount is often what the customer did not expect and does not consider fair. It is especially offensive for those whose pets the services of a veterinarian did not help.

Journalists, with the help of two dogs and a cat, carried out a “control purchase” of such services – a procedure that is provided for by law for use by state supervision authorities, but since March last year has not been available to them, like all other control procedures that require contact with the person being inspected. The journalists previously examined their pets at veterinary clinics, where they confirmed that they were absolutely healthy. After that, veterinarians were called to them using phone numbers from the first pages of search engine results, citing vomiting, problems with stool and poor appetite. And they found problems in each patient that required treatment, and issued bills for 2,400, 9,000 and 10,900 rubles, respectively.

One of the journalists asked the person who came to him on call to show a document confirming his qualifications, and was refused. Do not rush to be indignant – there is nothing illegal in this refusal. Veterinary services are not subject to licensing, which means that anyone has the right to offer and perform them – just like services for the repair of technically complex goods, legal, educational and many others. To advertise them on the Internet, including on platforms with multimillion-dollar audiences, you just need to pay and do not need to confirm that you have the necessary qualifications for this.

It turns out that professional services in many areas can be offered to us, almost anonymously, not only by unscrupulous, but also by incompetent people who should not be trusted with expensive things, not to mention the health of pets, the education of children, or solving their legal problems. An unscrupulous person can be competent, but an incompetent person is unlikely to be conscientious, otherwise he would not undertake something for which he is not ready. Therefore, before ordering the service you need, do not hesitate to ask the person offering it for confirmation of his qualifications. These may be relevant diplomas, but more important than diplomas, it seems to me, are reliable consumer reviews about the quality of his work.

The key word here is reliable. As the importance of reviews in competition has grown, so have the risks of falsification, undermining the trust in what we see on business websites and popular “reviews.” I think this trust could be significantly increased by creating a service at State Services in which consumers registered here could freely publish authorized reviews about the quality of services. The solution to this problem depends on the Ministry of Digital Development and the State Services operator.

I would also advise providers of services, the quality of which the consumer cannot evaluate during their execution or when accepting the results, to video record the process of their work and provide the recording to the customer. This would become their competitive advantage, and in the event of a dispute about the quality of the service, it would help resolve it with the help of experts without going to court.

As for legislation, it is necessary to unblock as soon as possible the powers of state supervisory authorities to conduct inspections, without which it is impossible to punish even those whose violations of the rights of many consumers have been recognized by the court.

The moratorium on inspections, just extended by the government until the end of next year, like the abolition of Article 200 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Consumer Fraud” twenty years ago, did not reduce the state’s burden on business, which was the declared purpose of these measures. Entrepreneurs are much more concerned about completely different types of this burden: taxes and non-tax payments, new costly responsibilities, growth in regulated tariffs and personnel shortages, increased control over market prices, monopolization of markets. Impunity for abuses only encourages the unscrupulous, replenishing their ranks with those who could not stand the competition under such rules. It’s time to understand that it is impossible to make life easier for business at the expense of consumers – just as it is impossible for consumers to make life easier at the expense of business. They have a common fate; each side can only be good if the other is good.