I am in mourning for Fair Go, the programme producer Peter Morritt and I devised 33 years ago.

Fair Go was designed to be, and has remained for those 33 years, a court of last resort for ordinary Kiwis, ripped off by conmen, crooks and shysters.

Its format was simple: three stories each week in which the Fair Go team brought to book dishonest traders, heartless corporations, shoddy tradespeople and assorted other rip-off merchants. Plus the occasional light hearted look at your rights as a consumer.

It was in essence a ‘goodies and baddies’ show. The viewer’s satisfaction was in seeing the baddies get their comeuppance and the wronged get justice.

And the programme got results, often to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, for those who came to it for help.

To do all this, Fair Go needed no flashy sets, no gorgeous presenters. In many ways Kevin Milne,  its host for around 20 years, exemplified the programme he presented – honest, unpretentious, down-to-earth, a real Kiwi institution.

All of this changed last night as Fair Go was transformed into little more than a glossier version of Target – trivial, insubstantial, more interested in effect than in doing its job on behalf of those not given a fair go. As Herald television critic, Linda Herrick, quite rightly concluded, ‘a lemon of a programme’.

It may not be too late for Fair Go to return to its brief, to abandon the bells and whistles, the gimmicks and devices, the fake cliff-hangers that it believes will hold its audience, but which will in reality alienate that audience. The popular saying applies: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Fair Go wasn’t broke. It has not been out of the top five programmes in living memory. If it is to stay there, it must get back to its job of looking after its customers, the thousands of ordinary Kiwis who have not had  a fair go.

Please.

Lee Shelton - TVNZ

If you want to know how not to handle a complaint to Fair Go, you could scarcely do better than check out the extraordinary story of Lee Shelton’s attempts to get Air New Zealand to make a minor change to his flight arrangements for a return trip to China.

Lee had booked a domestic Air New Zealand flight from Wellington to Auckland where he would join an international Air New Zealand flight to Beijing. But some time after booking the flights he changed his job and moved to Auckland. So he phoned Air New Zealand to cancel the Wellington-Auckland leg and tell them he would be checking in for the international flight at Auckland. Very reasonable.

Air New Zealand didn’t think so. Lee would have to pay a penalty for making the change to his travel arrangements. He was then offered three options:

1. He could cancel and rebook the entire journey for a fee of $500

2. He could buy a new one-way ticket to Wellington and catch the original flight back to Auckland. Read the rest of this entry »

Kev Writes

Photo: TVNZ

Feel free to stick my photo up on your site any time, Brian. Fair Go doesn’t ask permission to stick other people’s photos up on the wall and nor should you.

I think companies that deal with the public have a responsibility to front up to the public when things go wrong. That includes fronting up on television. It’s not good enough to just say, “we’ll fix it…but we refuse to talk on the telly about what happened, who was responsible, or if it’s likely to happen again.”

The Fair Go Wall is about companies not fronting up on camera when we think there are still questions to be answered. It’s not about whether they’ve decided to fix the problem or not.

Now there’s the Wall, these people know they’ll be “appearing” if they front up or not.

As for Mr Callander. He had every opportunity to front up to the camera originally but didn’t. Good on him for fronting up in the end, though.

I Reply with a Challenge

Good morning, old friend. And thanks for replying to my post. Unfortunately, that isn’t good enough. As a public figure, I don’t think just providing a written response to my complaint will do. I require you to come to my premises, so that I can cross-examine you further on this infringement. If you fail to do so, I will put a large photograph of you in the window of my offices with the inscription: Kev Milne – Wanted for Questioning! I will refuse to take it down until you yield, Further, when you get here, I will take measures to loosen your tongue, by forcing you to drink large quantities of fine wine. So there!

Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: TVNZ

On a reasonably regular basis, companies who are the subject of a complaint to Fair Go come to us for advice or training. If we think they’re ratbags, hoping to enlist our help in ripping people off, we send them packing. Otherwise our advice is the same advice we give to all our clients: be straightforward, tell the truth, admit your mistakes. And: Sort it out. Fix it. 

Recently I gave a brickbat to Fair Go for an item it did on a company called My Refund. The company undertakes for a fee to apply on your behalf to the IRD for a refund, if it discovers you are entitled to one. Two of My Refund’s clients were kept waiting an unreasonable amount of time for their refund to be sent to them. A third not only didn’t get a refund, but discovered that she now had to pay the IRD almost $1,000. She would have been better to let sleeping dogs lie. Read the rest of this entry »

Eleanor Black wanted to go to the Simon and Garfunkel concert at the Vector Arena in Auckland. According to the Ticketmaster ads, tickets would be on sale on line and on the phone from 9am on Friday, April 17. So Eleanor got onto her computer dead on nine only to discover that by 9.01 tickets for the seats she wanted were already sold out. She then tried for cheaper seats. Sold out! Undaunted, she decided to try the phone, but couldn’t get through at all. After 20 minutes she gave up.

But there was a mystery here. There was seating for 10,000 people at the Simon and Garfunkel concert in the Vector Arena, so how could the seats have sold out so quickly. Eleanor took her story to Fair Go. Read the rest of this entry »