Thursday, June 9, 2011

Improve price portal, say consumers

KUALA LUMPUR: Consumers say the portal to help them check and compare prices of goods sold at 1,255 retail outlets nationwide is a good initiative but needs to be improved.

Some felt that while it was innovative, it was not practical for the older generation who were not tech-savvy.

Administrative executive Surindar Kaur, 50, said she was impressed with the idea of the 1Malaysia Pengguna Bijak (1MPB) portal, set up by the Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Con­sumerism Ministry.

“I tried to log in to the portal but it was slow,” she said, adding that it was also confusing and difficult to use.

Associate strategic communications officer Farhanna Nazaruddin, 28, said the website was too cluttered and after 10 minutes of trying, the website failed.

“There are too many things to click on.”

Jane Lee, 57, said it would be better to display the price lists in newspapers or in leaflets it would be more convenient.

However, consumers could not log in to the site for most of the day.

An online portal quoted a ministry spokesman as saying there was a hardware problem, adding that there was no problem accessing the site but they could not get into the database of prices.

A check late on Wednesday found the portal working fine.

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