MCI teams have completed the inspection tours on the commercial facilities and markets in various regions of the Kingdom, to verify compliance with the awareness campaigns known as “Know Your Right” launched by the Ministry earlier.
In that regards, the Ministry carried out 8127 inspection tours, resulted in detecting 2088 violations, related to the regulations of consumer protection, applied by the Ministry, which provides that all items offered for sale, whether imported or locally made, should conform to the provisions of Trade Data System, as well as to anti-commercial fraud Law, also all producers and distributors should be asked to print the trademark of the manufacturers on all quantities, along with placing a card describing the item data and the prices before being offered for sale in the commercial markets.
The statistics show that there were 1917 inspection tours in the eastern region, followed by Medina 1155, then the central region 1478, and then the southern region 923, Holy Makkah 912, then Qassim region 894, finally the northern region 848.
The most important of MCI campaigns was “We are Proud of our Language, in which the Ministry stressed that all establishments, markets and shops should use the Arabic language in all invoices, price tags, advertisements, contracts, quotations, publications and warranty vouchers with the possibility of using English as a second language. This comes as a pursuant to the requirements of the commercial data system, so that to enable the consumer of having full knowledge about the goods and services he is going to get, based on his mother language.
Also MCI has been following up the requirements of the previous campaign “Sold Items are not Refundable or Replaced” stressing the prevention of using such phrase or any similar words in retail outlets, or in publications or advertisements. In addition to the campaign “Do not Ask How Much” which aims at showing the consumers their rights in getting the price with full transparency and clarity, without the need to ask how much, and to protect the consumer against fraud or manipulation while offering different prices for the same item.
MCI has been following up as well the campaign ”No Additional Charges” which strictly prohibited obtaining additional charges from customers while using their credit cards, especially there were shops getting 5% and others 2.5% as additional charges, under the pretext of the efforts incurred for collecting the due amounts, while purchasing with credit cards.
The follow up included as well the campaign “Take the Rest” which advise the consumer to take the rest of the money even in coins while purchasing, stating that non-compliance with the instructions will be fined. MCI is following up as well the commitment of the campaign "Prices Start from" which prohibited the announcement of the minimum price without clarifying the maximum one, and thus misleading the consumer of the low price, while the item price is higher than the advertised one.
MCI aims to ensure the commitment of all shops with the instructions of the Ministry`s campaigns and urges all consumers to be aware of the regulations contained in such campaigns, and to lodge their complaints immediately in case of non-compliance with the Ministry`s instructions. MCI would like to confirm as well its on-going efforts to monitor the shops, markets and all commercial establishments, also calls on all consumers to lodge their complaints and observations through the toll free number 1900, or through the application of a Commercial Notification.