The link at the end of this post is to a post on Kumamoto City’s Facebook page about unscrupulous merchants attempting to take advantage of people hit by the quake (trying to entice consumers into agreements to have their homes repaired at exorbitant prices, etc). Actually, I received a robocall from one such merchant. I found the robocall to be particularly irritating because

  1. robocalls (automated, prerecorded calls) force ordinary people to drop what the are doing to answer the phone without spending the valuable time of flesh-and-blood employees (in other words, their time is precious but our time is free)

  2. one never really knows where the robocall has come from (no viable call-back number, no way to verify legitimacy)

In this case, I pushed “1” on my phone indicating that I was interested. Of course, I wasn’t but I wanted to file a formal complaint about the practice and thought I might be able to do so if I could get a live human being on the phone and get him or her to give me a viable contact number.

Then I called the city’s consumer office (消費者センター). Sadly, I learned that there was nothing I could do. In Japan, shady businesses are permitted to robocall thousands of people, interrupt what they are doing, and leave them no clear way of contacting and/or complaining to or about the company responsible for the robocall. Even more sadly, the person who took my call at the city’s consumer office didn’t seem to fully understand what was problematic about the current system. When she said “just hang up,” I had to explain that that was not the point. The point in my mind is that the current system that allows unscrupulous companies to take advantage of consumers with impunity. She seemed to understand this after I explained it to her but I wondered why I, the consumer, had to explain that to her, the consumer issues specialist.

A day later, someone from company called me from a mobile phone. I asked for a company phone number but couldn’t get one. This confirmed my suspicions about the shadiness of the business but I had already been told by the Kumamoto City representative that nothing could be done so I told the guy why I was displeased and left it at that.

It’s good that the city, prefecture, and national government have hotlines for consumers who have been taken advantage of. It would be even better, though, if they would fix the system and take away the unfair advantages that shady businesses have been allowed.

https://www.facebook.com/KumamotoCity/photos/pcb.1120819334607588/1120818681274320/?type=3&theater