Our complaint handling & inspection processes

Consumer Protection BC is a provincial regulator. We license seven different sectors and regulate specific consumer transactions. This is how we help ensure our regulated businesses operate within the law:

Complaint handling

Our enforcement inspectors review and investigate complaints. It’s important to remember that we are an administrative tribunal and all of our investigations follow due process, which can take time. Our approach is to help businesses voluntarily comply with the law – our goal is not to punish a business, but rather to correct marketplace behaviour. Our decision makers have the authority and expertise to choose the tool most appropriate for the situation and have discretion when it comes to their decisions.

Read about our enforcement tools and inspection/investigation powers.

Inspections

We have a team of compliance inspectors who ensure businesses comply with the laws we oversee.

Inspections can be:

• Risk-based/routine/random: inspections to make sure a business is complying with the law.
• Follow-up: inspections that are in response to issues found during earlier inspections.
• Complaint-based: inspections to review, discuss or inspect a specific issue or allegation.

Depending on what the inspection uncovered, the inspector may choose to write a report to recommend that a specific enforcement action be taken.

We have created inspection guides for each of our licensed sectors to help you know what to expect from one of our inspections.

Read our inspection guides.