The district consumer disputes redressal commission has ordered a tile-making company and its authorised distributor to pay Rs 10,000 to a customer for selling him defective tiles. The commission also gave them three days to refund Rs 18,000 to complainant Raman Kumar Bansal of Aggar Nagar’s Shree Raghunath Optical shop.If they pay later, it will be with 8% annual interest. The complainant is in the optician’s trade and he had engaged the authorised distributor of Kajaria Ceramics to check out tiles to replace the floor of his shop. The seller promised to provide him with best-quality product and told him about the manufacturing company’s good reputation in the ceramic world.
Assured by the authorised distributor, the complainant placed his order for tiles on April 21, 2023, for which the opposite parties charged him Rs 18,000, including state and central GST (goods and services tax). After receiving the tiles, Bansal used the best available adhesive on the market, sourced from a building-material store from Pakhowal Road’s Daad village marble market that used to be the authorised stockiest of Kajaria Tiles. Bansal also hired the best available technician for fixing the floor tiles using that adhesive, and paid huge money to the opposite parties, that building-material store, and that technician.
But after just 20 days, the colour of the tiles started to fade and a black substance started coming out of those, making those look untidy and disgraceful. There were even scratch marks on the surface of those tiles. The buyers called the seller promptly. After an inspection, the dealer promised to replace the faulty tiles within three days, but when 8 days passed and Bansal called him again, the dealers said they could replace only the front two or three tiles.
Bansal reminded the opposite parties that it was against the ethics of business. He tried to approach the opposite parties many times, later, but they refused to entertain his request. Their behaviour compelled the complainant to serve them a legal notice for replacement of those tiles, but they failed to respond. The complainant then prayed the consumer commission for direction to the company for replacing all the tiles.
He demanded a compensation of Rs 1 lakh along with his litigation expenses of Rs 55,000. Upon notice, no one from the other party turned up to contest the charges, and so the commission had to deliver an ex-parte verdict. After examining all the evidence, the commission held the company guilty of selling defective product and making a customer suffer. It observed that, therefore, it would be just and appropriate if the opposite parties refunded the total billed value of Rs 18,000 to the complainant jointly and severally within 30 days from the date of receiving a copy of the order.
Failing this, they will have to pay the complainant even an interest on that amount, from the date of the order till the actual payment. The commission held that: “The opposite parties are burdened with further composite costs of Rs 10,000.”