Flight Tickets, Masks Top Consumer Complaints

The Consumer Council said it received more than 30,000 complaints last year – 26 percent more than the previous year and the highest since 2015 – due to a surge in travel- and health-related cases amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The watchdog said more than 5,300 out of the 30,395 complaints were related to travel matters, the highest among all product categories and more than double the figure in 2019.

This was followed by about 4,700 complaints related to medical or health products, most of them involving purchases of face masks.

Paul Lam, the council’s chairman, said the rise in the overall number of complaints was mainly due to the pandemic.

"I think the most prominent example is the increase in the number of complaints concerning face masks. In 2019, we received about seven complaints only. But last year, we received a total of 4,486 complaints. So that already accounted for an increase of more than 4,000 complaints last year.”

Lam explained that people went on a buying spree of face masks when supplies were scarce in the early days of the pandemic. He said many traders were overwhelmed by the purchase orders and failed to deliver their products on time.

On those travel-related complaints, more than 80 percent involved disputes over the purchase of flight tickets from travel agencies, airlines or online platforms.

The council's chief executive, Gilly Wong, said instead of getting a refund for cancelled flights, many customers were given travel credit as compensation.

She said the watchdog will closely monitor whether the rights of these customers are protected.

“This is another area that looking forward we have to be very cautious, mainly because for those credits, how airlines are going to fulfil their promise to allow the consumers to use the credit to buy tickets, whether the airfare will be more expensive than before or it will take a much longer time to book the tickets etc…that is something we have to monitor in future when the pandemic gets more settled and people start to travel again,” she said.

The council also said online shopping accounted for more than 40 percent of the complaints last year.

With the practice becoming increasingly popular during the pandemic, Wong said the watchdog will continue to conduct "mystery shopping" and publish its findings on the quality of online traders in hopes of improving their services.