Next time if you find any foreign bodies inside a soft drink bottle, you can approach the consumer disputes redressal forum seeking compensation. The second additional district consumer redressal forum directed soft drink major Coca-Cola India to pay Rs 5,000 to a city resident, who found some foreign elements inside a bottle.
On November 27, 2011, Mr. Niranjan, a resident of R.T. Nagar in the city, had purchased a 300 ml Sprite bottle from the Pavilion Family Bar and Restaurant in Mathikere. When he took it home, he found some foreign substance inside the sealed bottle. When he called up the customer care division of Coca-Cola, company staff told him that he was trying to cheat the company by giving false and mala fide complaint to get monetary benefits. Mr. Niranjan approached the forum seeking a compensation of Rs 2.50 lakh and other relief.
Coca-Cola argued before the forum that it is not involved in the production and bottling of the beverage, which is done by bottlers authorized by the company. “While filling the beverage in bottles and sealing the bottle, a highly advanced and sophisticated process is followed. With such strict international standards of quality, inspection, cleanliness and hygiene, it is highly improbable that any foreign body, pollutants, dirt or any other matter could enter the bottle as alleged by the complainant, unless the bottle has been tampered with after it has left the factory gates. The bottle has been tampered with and is spurious and counterfeit. The complainant has not provided the details of the product such as batch number, name of the manufacturer etc. which is always mentioned on the bottle. Since the contents of the bottle were not consumed, there was no damage sustained,” it argued.
The forum, in its order, said that the company, except providing self-serving statement, had not put forth substantive documents to prove its argument. “The company has further contended that the bottle can be sealed manually. This is only a hypothesis as the bottle purchased from the shop clearly goes to show that it is a mechanically sealed bottle and manually operated bottle. Hence it lies ill on the mouth of company to contend having per contra in this regard,” the order stated.