Bhubaneswar: A Xerox shop owner in Odisha’s Sambalpur district is paying heavily for refusing to return a small change of Rs 3 to a customer. A consumer court has directed the shop owner to pay a sum of Rs 25,000 to the aggrieved customer as a penalty and pay a hefty interest amount if the payment is not done within a month.
According to reports, a man went to a Xerox shop in the Budharja area of Sambalpur for a photocopy of a document on April 28. After the photocopy was done, the customer Rs 2 but did not receive the change of Rs 3.
When the customer asked the shop owner for the change the shopkeeper said that the price of one photocopy was Rs 5. The irked customer argued that all shops in the area were charging Rs 2 for one page of photocopy. At this, the shopkeeper returned Rs 5 to the customer saying that he was giving the money to charity to a beggar.
The words of the shopkeeper hurt the customer, who approached the consumer court with his grievance. The court issued a notice to the shopkeeper to appear before it, but the latter did not appear even once despite four summons. On the fifth date of the case, a lawyer appeared in court on behalf of the shopkeeper.
In the first hearing, the court fined the shopkeeper Rs 2,000. After the second hearing, the court slapped an additional fine of Rs 500 on the shopkeeper. At the time of the third hearing, the court ordered the shopkeeper to pay a fine of Rs 25,000.
