How we help consumers in disputes with businesses

The Office of Fair Trading is Queensland's consumer protection regulator. We administer a number of laws which are designed to ensure the marketplace is fair for both consumers and traders.

Sometimes though, problems do occur. For example, have you ever bought faulty goods or paid for something that never arrived? As a consumer, you have rights when issues like these arise.

Following our 5-step guide may help you resolve your dispute or assist you to lodge a formal complaint with us.

Step 1

Businesses must follow certain rules and knowing your consumer rights could help you resolve an issue before it becomes a problem.

Jump on our website to learn more about your consumer rights and responsibilities.

Step 2

Most businesses are happy to work out any problems with consumers. You can raise your concerns with them in any way you feel comfortable. This might be over the phone, in person or by writing an email or letter.

To help you with this step, we have sample letters and scripts on our website.

Remember, when communicating with the business, it's important to be clear about what the issue is and to keep records of all of your interactions.

Step 3

Many businesses belong to an industry association and often these bodies will try to help resolve problems between their members and customers.

If you're not sure if there's an association for your issue, you can use the contact list on our website as a starting point to find the right organisation to direct your complaint to.

Step 4

After we've received your complaint, we'll assess it to determine:

• what issues are in dispute
• whether we have jurisdiction
• what options may assist to resolve it

and

• if any of laws we administer have been broken.

Although we can't act on every complaint or force a business to provide the outcome you seek, we log complaints into our records to assist with ongoing monitoring of the marketplace.

If we can assist with your complaint, then it might progress to a range of outcomes. For example, we may:

• investigate the matter
• refer your complaint to another, more relevant agency

or

• attempt to conciliate the issue between you and the business.

Conciliation is an informal way to try to resolve complaints, where we act as an intermediary between consumers and traders. It's free and it can help both you and the business involved avoid having to take legal action to resolve the dispute.

It is important to know that the OFT cannot make judgments like a court or tribunal and force a business to compensate you or rectify a problem.

If your dispute with the business remains unresolved, then we can give you advice on what to do next. This might include taking the complaint to a tribunal or court or getting your own legal advice.

Step 5

Now you understand how we handle complaints, step 5 is to make an official complaint to us.

Complaints to the Office of Fair Trading must be in writing.

The simplest and quickest way for you to lodge an official consumer complaint is via our online complaint form.

If you can't access our online form, you can lodge a complaint manually through the post or at one of our counters.

Information about this process is available on our website and through our call centre.

Remember, however you lodge your complaint, the more information you give us the more quickly and accurately we can assess it.

We normally contact you within 10 working days of receiving your complaint. If you haven't heard from us by this time, we would recommend you contact us to confirm we've received it.

Although we aim to resolve most conciliation matters within 30 days, each matter is different and it may take longer depending on the issues involved.

If your complaint leads to an investigation, we will keep you updated on its progress.

We hope this information has been helpful.

If you're still unsure about lodging a complaint with the Office of Fair Trading or if you need help to lodge, you can:

• send us an email
• call us on 13 QGOV (13 74 68)

or

• visit one of our offices.