We
have been thinking a lot lately about why consumer complaints to the
Chief Judge seem to go nowhere. Two warnings in two years; one
written; one verbal. It is an amazing set of statistics. Either there
is great consumer contentment with their GALs and they are doing a
near perfect job, or there is huge, bigoted, unfair "bad
sportism" about GALs that has to be weeded out with "tough
love". The stories we hear from many consumers suggest that more
than 2 GALs have done bad things and should warrant some form of
corrective action. What gives?
Then
we started to dig a bit. Who creates GALs? Who trains them? Who has
worked with them in the courts? Who has worked with GALs in the
legislature? Who acts on consumer complaints about GALs? As they say,
"Three guesses and the first two don't count." It is
analogous to asking the Director of General Motors to deal with
consumer complaints about Chevrolets. Sure he knows a lot about
Chevrolets, but how on earth can he keep his judgment fair, and avoid
it being tainted by pride in his "product".
It is
an amazing example of asking the manufacturer be exclusively in
charge of consumer's rights, protection and consumer's complaints.
How is the judge in this role to avoid a rampant perception of all
consumer's complaints as evidence of consumers being "bad
sports"? And ... viewing these consumer's complaints as a sort
of temper tantrums? It leads to a "tough love" handling of
perceived tantrums. It leads to minimal instruction/help in how to do
a complaint, no identification of criteria for a complaint, no
consumers at hearings. It leads to consumer unfriendliness in the
final response. These responses are becoming notorious: terse one
line responses to consumers after their complaint has been dismissed
and they have poured their hearts out about lives that have been
wounded by a GAL.
We
sense that it is the pride of the "manufacturer" in his
product that gets in the way of consumer protection. The manufacturer
is a GAL's best friend!
Other
states are moving the consumer complaint process away from the office
of the manufacturer. We need to too.
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