When a gym pressured caterer Arissa Hee, 30, into signing a $6,000 package and charged the full amount to her credit card without her consent, she turned not to Singapore’s consumer watchdog but to “refund guru” Joel Kong.
Mr Kong, 31, a former legal executive, set up a business last November that helps aggrieved consumers get their money back from errant businesses which may have misrepresented their products or, as in Ms Hee’s case, used hard-sell tactics.
The role of his firm, Solutionalization – known formerly as The Refund Guru – may sound similar to that of the Consumers Association of Singapore (Case), but his tactics are anything but.
His modus operandi includes sending a letter of demand to the errant firm and phoning it daily.
If the firm still does not budge, he shares his client’s story on social media and other sites to shame it into responding.
“I’d send the link (to the online story) to the firm,” Mr Kong told The Sunday Times. “It can then either ignore, engage or negotiate with me. So far, nobody has ignored me.”
He said he has helped eight consumers successfully so far and Ms Hee is one of them.
The existence of such a firm – through which people take dispute resolution into their own hands – arises from weak consumer-protection laws, said branding specialist Samir Dixit, managing director of Brand Finance Asia-Pacific.
The current process for consumers to get help is “too lengthy… (and) simply has very little legal backing”, he said.
He added: “The extremely important aspect of any such dispute-resolution format is that it must remain neutral and unbiased… But this becomes a question mark with entities such as Solutionalization.”
Mr Kong said he was prompted to set up the business after seeing people get turned away by the law firms at which he worked due to the high costs of hiring a lawyer.
“I wanted to give these consumers hope that someone can help them,” he said.
Mr Kong charges his clients 10 per cent of the amount they want to claim. He said he “didn’t earn a single cent” in the first four months after starting the business. He relied on the income of his wife.
“I’ve always told my clients I’m not a lawyer, I have no legal qualification, I’m just there to provide assistance,” said Mr Kong, an A-level holder. He added: “I’m not undermining Case’s position.”
Ms Hee, who found out about Solutionalization through a Google search, said she did not engage a lawyer as it would have been costly and she might not have got her money back. She said she did not speak to Case first because she found Mr Kong more approachable and efficient.
“He didn’t have fixed office hours so I could contact him any time. He even accompanied me to the gym to speak to the operations manager,” she added.
Case also uses negative publicity by posting blacklists of errant retailers. But such tactics may not always work, said its executive director Seah Seng Choon.
“Consumers should be prepared for possible responses from the errant companies… (and) to pay for the cost of defending themselves if their activities end up in a civil suit,” he said.
He advised aggrieved consumers to approach Case before dealing with the matter on their own.
This article was first published on Jul 03, 2016.
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