Consumer court raps Alliance Comnet

A Delhi consumer court has ordered a medical transcription education institute to pay compensation of Rs 10,000, along with refunding course fees of Rs 25,000, to each of the aggrieved 9 students for duping them by promising jobs after the training.

"We find Alliance Comnet Ltd guilty of rendering deficient services to the complainants by not fulfilling their promise to train the complainants and to absorb them as one of their production team," the North West Delhi District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum said in its order.

Holding Alliance Comnet guilty of adopting unfair trade practice, forum president Mahesh Chandra, members Ashoka Jain and R K Prabhakar directed the company to also pay litigation cost of Rs 1,500 to each complainant.

"All the complainants are at the threshold of making their career. They have spent valuable time and invested a huge amount with the sole hope that they will get a job after the training," the Forum noted, adding "Alliance Comnet has tried to shirk their liability to provide job to them."

Complainants Brajesh Sinha, Deepankar Singh, Shalini Gupta, Pushpa Nair, Manjula, Gunjan Sahni, Parveen Kumar Jaiswal, Amit Kumar Mishra and Sarvesh Kumar claimed that they joined the course paying Rs 25,000 lumpsum (Rs 27,000 in instalments) each for the same.

The students said they joined the institute after being lured by the company's promises that the course would be completed within five months and that they would be given jobs with a starting salary of Rs 6,500 per month.

The forum rejected the company's contention that the complainants were not 'consumers' after finding that all nine of them had paid the course fees.