Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Competition and professional fees

Chan Ban Choon wrote to the Straits Times about the need to provide the Law Society or government to provide guidelines on lawyer's fees. He pointed out that some lawyers are charing fees that are too high and "as they like". 

There used to be a guideline on professional fees set by the various bodies. I recall that the Competition Competition asked the doctors to remove the guidelines, so that the fees can be reduced by free market competition. I heard that this was not the outcome of the removal of fees. Some doctors increased their fees, and charged "what they like".

It is not possible for consumers to know what are the fair rates of fees for professional services, and to know the standard of the fees. This has to be set by knowledgeable people who takes into account the interest of the consumers and the professionals. The old arrangement, where the professional bodies provide the guidelines, used to work fairly well.

I suggest that the old arrangement be restored. It should be clear that the fees are guidelines and that professionals can deviate from the guidelines if they have specific reasons and have informed consumers about the deviation and the reason. 

Another arrangement is for the Competitions Competition to maintain a website (or outsource the work to an authorized party) showing the fees for various types of standard work that are charged by various professional firms, such as lawyers, doctors and engineers. This will be helpful to consumers who can check the website and get to a professional that charge competitive rates. It will encourage competition and bring down the fees to a reasonable level.

Tan Kin Lian

4 comments:

JasonX said...

I have to agree with this post. It is rather sad that in the name of "competition", we ended up on the losing end due to our lack of knowledge on "acceptable fees" for such rare services.

For services as rare as lawyer services, there is practically no way for consumers to assess what fee is reasonable, short of seeking out several law firms to get a rough guideline on the asking fee.

However, even chosing a cheap fee is not truely safe. Being lawyers themselves, it is easy for them to add in extra charges during the term of services, and its hard for consumers to argue against them.

C H Yak said...

The greatest trap is for "Appeal Costs".

Usually the ignorant will end up paying 2 sets of costs.

Even a public body like the PTO overseeing traffic accident compensation cases could be fooled by a descriptive essay of what legal works had been done. Worst is the PTO will never take responsibility for making a wrong decision.

zhummmeng said...

Do you know what is the correct 'fee' or commission to pay your insurance agent?
Did you know how much you paid for the wholelife product your agent pushed to you?
You paid 2.5 years of your premium with 1.5 years going to your agent.
What did your agent do to be paid so much? Did you get good and competent advice? If you had you wouldn't have been sold this wholelife product, right? Were you aware that your agent would be receiving this 'fee' before the sale? Did your agent tell you? NO!!! there was NO disclosure , I bet, although the law required them to disclose.
You see, the non transparency?
You were in the dark about what you were to get and what you had to pay .You had NO chance to negotiate, right?
Have you ever walked into a showroom and bought something without knowing the price? I bet a lot of thing went into it before you made the 'informed decision' to buy, right? Did you buy the car by looking and reading the brochure?

Lye Khuen Way said...

Well, as I commented before this is Singapore taking 2 steps backward after enacting a "Fair Competition/ Pro-consumer" piece of legislation. What has happen since is a joke ! What has CASE to say ? I used to be a CASE member.... Pathetic.

Actually, this is but a symptom of our times. Most Singapore Institutions has regressed since the last 10 years or so. Debatable ?

Blog Archive