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How would you like to live in a country where almost everything works? A country where unscrupulous lenders are limited in the amount they can charge for loans, where the utility companies can't just ignore complaining customers, and where an influential body actively fights for consumers' rights and is able to demand and obtain rapid change.
That place, you may be surprised to learn, is Denmark.
This week, I spent two days in Copenhagen trying to gauge what makes this country of just 5.5 million people the consumer model for the rest of Europe. The visit was prompted by a discussion I had last year with Meglena Kuneva, the European commissioner in charge of consumer affairs.
After writing a number of stories in which Guardian Money readers had been ignored by a low-cost airline or telecoms firm that had let them down, I was keen to learn in which European country citizens were treated best.
After a slight pause, Kuneva said that, while nowhere was perfect, Denmark was the EU state that offered the best overall consumer package. She particularly highlighted the positive impact of Europe's oldest consumer group, Forbruger Rådet (FR) - the Danish consumer council, a cross between the UK's Consumer Focus and Which?
"In the Nordic countries we expect to receive good service, and we generally get it. If we don't, we complain. To not do so would contravene our strong sense of natural justice," says FR's president, Camilla Hersom, who goes on to claim that Denmark's good consumer practices are partly the result of more than 60 years of campaigning.
"In Denmark there is a culture of trust between institutions and consumers that has built up over a number of years. The consumer council has been central to that, and we have a unique position within the legislative process," Hersom told me in FR's HQ, which is set back from one of Copenhagen's busier shopping precincts.
Forbruger Rådet came into play in 1947 as consumers grew increasingly frustrated by rationing that meant it was almost impossible to buy much-needed items such as children's shoes. Following a campaign, the prime minister of the day acceded to the demands of protestors, and FR's first incarnation, the Danish Housewives' Consumer Council (DHF) was born.
Today the body is funded by the government but says it is fiercely independent of government thinking and instead acts as an umbrella body for the 27 consumer groups in Denmark - from the cycling association to the beer drinkers' society. Both cycling and beer drinking are big in Denmark.
Crucially, the body has the "right to be heard" by government when any new piece of legislation is being formulated. "One thing that sets us apart from other consumer bodies around the world is the fact we spend a great deal of time and energy lobbying ministers on behalf of consumers. We have a reputation for independence - we talk to all political parties, left or right, and when we warn that a proposal would not be in consumers' best interests, people do listen," says Hersom.
Perhaps the most interesting things that set the Danes apart are their "boards of complaint", which exist to sort out disputes between consumers and service providers. If you have a disagreement with your phone provider that you can't resolve, you apply to the telecoms board. Assuming that your claim is deemed to have merit, it is heard by a board that comprises two or three members from the consumer council, the same number representing the company/supplier and a judge to give the casting vote.
The result of the hearing is not binding on a company, but in most cases, firms found against do abide by the decision. There are currently 18 boards covering every area from lawyers to undertakers. They are mostly free to use as a consumer. The biggest and busiest board, which covers electronic appliances (in most cases they have broken in less than two years but the retailer has refused to take them back), costs €20-€30 to lodge a complaint. If the consumer wins, the fee is returned.
"A small number of companies ignore the findings, but they quickly find themselves on the blacklist in the public domain. People do look at these lists and act accordingly. It's a system that is trusted and generally works well," says spokesman Bent Bøkman.
The consumer group says most complaints are made about consumer electronic goods. The banks provide their fair share, but the utilities that form the bane of UK consumers' lives appear to be less of a problem to Danes.
Like everywhere, the credit crisis has further pushed the banks into the spotlight. Bøkman says that two years ago the body launched a "quiet campaign" to get Danes to realise that banks had changed for the worst and were now only interested in selling them financial products.
"Consumers here had always relied on what we called "the bankman" - the trusted manager in the bank, who you went to if you wanted to buy a car or house. In the past, he would have looked at your circumstances and advised you accordingly. Suddenly that all changed. We had to make Danes aware that their old trusted adviser needed to be looked at rather more sceptically," says Bøkman.
As part of that work, the body has campaigned for a cap on how much loan providers can charge, to include all loan fees, which are common in Denmark. The legislation, which should become law at some point this year, will mean lenders are no longer able to charge more than 15% plus the Bank of Denmark's base rate, which is currently around 5% - a total of 20%, which makes a mockery of the 300%-plus "payday loans" offered by some doorstep lenders in the UK.
An example of the body's ability to introduce quick reform was seen in its response to the collapse, just before Christmas, of the low-cost Danish airline Sterling. As happened in the UK with the now-defunct Zoom Airlines, lots of ticket-holders who had booked tickets with a "Dan" (Danish debit card) found they were not protected by the card provider or the travel bonds and lost their money. The consumer group immediately started campaigning for separately booked flights to be covered by its equivalent of the ATOL bond. The consumer group expects that to come into force on 1 April. Such a change would take years in Britain.
Meanwhile, the organisation is now arguing that consumers who lose money after being given gift vouchers for companies that go bust before they can be redeemed, should be treated as preferential creditors. It also wants deposits put down on big items such as cars or furniture to be held in an escrow bank account prior to delivery.
The body has also actively campaigned for better labelling of food to show how much sugar, fat and salt are in each packet. It managed to stop one soft drinks manufacturer from increasing the size of its bottles - from half a litre to 0.6L - in an attempt to increase consumption.
"Consumer rights is an ongoing battle that is ever more complex," says Hersom. "The internet and intellectual property rights are a big challenge for us. We have already resisted the right of ISPs to cut off broadband users who have mistakenly downloaded material they shouldn't have, and more of our work will be in this area."
Case Study: An Englishwoman abroad
"It all just works," is Nicola O'Regan's answer to the question: what is it like to be a consumer in Denmark?
The actuary, and mother of a young daughter, now lives in Copenhagen after quitting London with her Danish partner a year and a half ago in a bid to improve her work-life balance. "As soon as I got the equivalent of my National Insurance card, it all became very easy," O'Regan says.
"In the main, companies do what you've asked with the minimum of hassle. The days of waiting in all day for a guy who fails to show up - as I used to in the UK - are over. If you want to get your internet connected in Denmark, you make an appointment, the engineer turns up as expected, and it works."
She says Danes pay a lot for their services, and as a result they expect them to be good. "They do appear to have a culture of complaining if things don't work. They even complain if they don't get a seat on the train. It helps that, as a country, they have invested a lot in technology. Your card is important. For example, you can't open a bank account without one. While I was waiting to get one, I was in a strange kind of limbo - unable to do anything. But once I had, everything fell into place."
Alongside the fact that everything functions, she has particular praise for the country's child-focused employment policies, but says the tax is a shock after the UK. Work is fitted around childcare, and fathers have the same rights to flexible working, she says. "Also, the society is less materialistic. Post-tax pay is often less than in other similar countries, but people do more outdoor things as a result. Eating out is very expensive, so people do it less. It's by no means perfect, but the extremes of wealth and poverty that you find elsewhere appear less so here. Most of the population are in the middle."
Case study: A Dane in London
One person who is uniquely qualified to talk about the differences between the UK and her native Denmark is Bronte Blomhoj. The 33-year-old co-owner of the Scandinavian Kitchen in central London was raised in Denmark but as lived here on and off for 12 years.
"I'm not sure the UK fares quite as badly as you think. Certainly the Danes are used to good service, and they love complaining if they don't get it. I feel I generally get pretty good service here, but I think I'm a pretty assertive consumer – it could be my Danishness coming out."
She says she had a problem closing an electricity account in the UK which she thinks may have been handled better at home. However, when she was in Denmark over Christmas, she had to get a refund on an unused train ticket. "It still took two phone calls to sort out, although the staff dealing with it were very nice.
"I think one thing Denmark has in its favour is the ID card system. All your details, tax records and so on are all held centrally, which makes things very easy. For example, if you went for a job that required a criminal record check, any police station in Denmark could run the check in five minutes. In the UK, these things can take forever. There are privacy issues with the cards, but on a practical level it really helps if you want to get things done."
However, she says that while in the UK you can get a mortgage or loan with just three utility bills, this would be unheard of in Denmark. One thing that really drives her mad about Denmark is the fact that most of the big supermarkets still refuse to accept foreign credit cards. "They have known about this problem for about 10 years and they still won't sort it out. Over 90% of Danes use their "Dan" [debit] cards so they don't see it as a problem. It drives the rest of us mad when we get to the front of the queue, only to be
turned away. It's crazy, and it's long overdue for change."
miles.brignall@guardian.co.uk
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