People who believe they were ripped off in vehicle and home repair cases as well as with tenancy contracts, may get a chance to take their case to the Fair Trading Commission (FTC).

Minister of Commerce, Consumer Affairs and Business Development, Senator Lynette Eastmond, hinted at this possibility yesterday on the Voice of Barbados call-in radio programme Down To Brasstacks.

Such issues now "tend to be outside of our mandate", said Eastmond, under whose portfolio the FTC fell.

"We have also been discussing those issues as to whether or not we do need to bring them under our purview because those issues are issues that are very close to all consumers – those issues dealing with tenancy agreements and house repairs and cars," she added.

Noting that some countries had established a framework to deal with such matters "that are critical to consumers", she conceded: "That is another step that we will have to look to take to determine exactly [how we will go] forward."

On radio, Eastmond fielded a number of calls dealing with consumer complaints, including prices that differed between what was displayed on the shelf and what showed up at the check-out counter.

"Our view is that we have to amend the legislation to make it very clear that when retail outlets put prices on goods, that when you go to the cash register that is the actual price that you will have to pay," she said.

However, there was already legislation stating that when a commodity had two prices, the consumer was entitled to the lower one, she noted.

Eastmond said while a lot of the FTC's work was not headline-catching, it had been busy. In 2005 about 1 835 people contacted it to make complaints, she added. (TY)