The Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion (CDA) is re­port­ing that be­tween Oc­to­ber 2021 and Sep­tem­ber 2022 it helped con­sumers re­cov­er over two mil­lion dol­lars from busi­ness­es.

The Di­vi­sion said the $2,063,710 was re­turned to con­sumers in the form of full and par­tial re­funds, ex­changes, re­pairs and cred­it notes.

In a state­ment the or­gan­i­sa­tion said it suc­cess­ful­ly re­solved 657 con­sumer cas­es, not­ing a res­o­lu­tion rate of 87.4 per cent.

It al­so re­ceived 3277 in­quiries from Face­book, emails and tele­phone calls and 752 com­plaints.

The CAD said it al­so con­duct­ed two Ad­verse Trade Prac­tices Or­der (AT­PO) ex­er­cis­es in No­vem­ber 2021 and June 2022 to de­ter­mine whether busi­ness­es were in com­pli­ance with the AT­PO 2000.

The CAD vis­it­ed 1,557 stores in malls and ma­jor ar­eas of com­merce where 120 busi­ness­es were found in breach and own­ers in con­tra­ven­tion of the AT­PO were is­sued warn­ings, giv­en copies of the or­der and re­vis­it­ed to en­sure com­pli­ance, the state­ment said.

The Ad­verse Trade Prac­tices Or­der 2000 (AT­PO) makes it an of­fence for any­one in the course of a busi­ness to en­gage in cer­tain trade prac­tices, which ad­verse­ly af­fect the eco­nom­ic in­ter­ests of con­sumers with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The or­der specif­i­cal­ly pro­hibits the dis­play and pub­li­ca­tion of state­ments, whether on busi­ness premis­es, ad­ver­tise­ments or re­ceipt books, the terms “No re­fund,” “No ex­change” and “No re­fund on sale items.”

Ac­cord­ing to the CAD, non-com­pli­ance is a crim­i­nal of­fence pun­ish­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion with fines rang­ing from $5,000 to $10,000 and im­pris­on­ment from four months to two years.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, as part of its con­sumer aware­ness and ed­u­ca­tion func­tion, an ac­tive Face­book plat­form was main­tained.

The CAD said the page gained 3,171 new sub­scribers/fol­low­ers and main­tained an over­all reach of 289,000 peo­ple.

In Jan­u­ary 2022, a Face­book Live Talk Se­ries was launched, a month­ly live talk show that ad­dress­es var­i­ous con­sumer top­ics and an­swers ques­tions in re­al time.

“The Live Talk Se­ries has been a ma­jor draw and has aid­ed in in­creas­ing the plat­form’s out­reach while fur­ther em­pow­er­ing con­sumers to make more in­formed pur­chas­ing de­ci­sions,” the CAD said.

It not­ed top­ics cov­ered in­clud­ed the role of the CAD, con­sumer rights and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, the Ad­verse Trade Prac­tices Or­der 2000, com­bat­ing il­lic­it trade in T&T, eat­ing well on a bud­get and ap­ply­ing “smart” shop­ping habits to help with bud­get­ing and sav­ing mon­ey to meet the cur­rent eco­nom­ic chal­lenges. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the CAD en­gaged in re­search top­ics that pro­vid­ed con­tent and rel­e­vant con­sumer tips rang­ing from ad­just­ing con­sumer pur­chas­ing be­hav­iours amidst the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic to iden­ti­fy­ing new vers­es re­fur­bished elec­tron­ic equip­ment.