Go Consumer

There is a service to help consumers resolve their issues with companies. It used to be called core.nic.in, now it is whitelibra. What whitelibra offers is a unique thing. It offers to mediate with between the companies and the consumers, for free! If things don't work out, the matter then goes to the court.
One would imagine that the companies would be queuing to sign up to this service. Whitelibra would have a two way responsibility. While it would be responsible to ensure that the consumers complaint is addressed speedily, it would also ensure that frivolous complaints are resolved at lower cost to the company, and that consumers would no longer be able to use threats to the company employees to get the actions faster than what could usually be possible. On the other hand, to a consumer who plays nice, the company starts to treat very shabbily.

WhiteLibra should become the first line, the default place to file a complaint by a consumer. No matter which company. The consumer is spared the running around, which is done by the whitelibra folks, and the companies are spared the frivolous, unreasonable, and threatening consumers. Both sides win.

Apparently something is wrong with this. Because companies are not tripping over themselves to register their consumer complaints contact with whitelibra. In fact, complaints routed through whitelibra are not being entertained at all by the companies, who insist that the consumer should contact them directly. So that they can play their games.
Which leaves one question: WHY?
The answer is pretty mundane. Something we Indians can guess instantly, but here it is for the world to understand. The complaints registered on whitelibra are public. The workflow is public, the resolution is public. If people choose whitelibra alone to resolve any complaints, be they with the neighborhood shop, or a multinational, then pretty soon their record will be public. We can get interesting data like: How many people are complaining about overbilling to a particular mobile operator? How many people are complaining about deficiency of service for a particular hotel or airline? Which companies do not have proper after sales support? Which cars have what issues... and so on.
It will be open for the world to see. When I as a curious observer go over to the whitelibra site and find that the mobile operator that I am using has been getting a lot of complains for overbilling, I will check my bills. It is very likely that I will find that I am being overcharged too and I will file my own complaint, and so many others would do so too. This is the nightmare scenario for the companies. Their strategies depend on keeping their practices under wraps. This is why they are not supporting whitelibra.
This is precisely why consumers should insist in going through whitelibra. In fact, even if you have an existing complaint, you should move it to whitelibra. Don't speak to the company directly ever. Speak only through whitelibra.
The fact is that no one expects companies to be 100% on target 100% of the time. A courier company may slip up on its delivery. An airline will bump off overbooked passengers. The stereo headset you buy will turn out to be defective. If the courier would be DHL, they would probably call you up to inform you that the package you sent was late and you can either get credit against the next time you decide to use DHL, or give your address and they will send you a refund cheque, or generally do whatever it is that is written in their manual. There is a very little chance that DHL will forget to call you, but that chance is there. When that happens, what we do is to call DHL. What we should do now is to call WhiteLibra. Even if we are on the best of terms with DHL and they are our corporate couriers, and we have special pricing. We go to whitelibra. Whitelibra gets in touch with DHL, DHL resolves the issue or presents it case why redressal is not applicable. Case closed. For the whole world to see. Believe it or not, this is good for DHL. Their responsiveness to their customers, which is there to begin with, is now seen by the world.
But, there are other companies, who have very unhappy customers, and no one is aware of them. Obviously, they have brought lots of advertisement space in the media, so no one is going to know anything about this. With whitelibra, whose job it is to publicly redress consumer complaints, these will be seen. There will be such a short time between a fraudulent scheme, or a bad quality product and its publicity that it will not be worth it for.
The Indian companies have been taking their consumers for a ride since the beginning. The foreign companies are doing the same thing.
What I am trying to say is check out whitelibra, be patient, and use it exclusively to file your consumer complaints. I am telling you, it is good for all of us.