I’m making a Disputes Tribunal Claim for my mother, who I believe has been unfairly treated by a second hand dealer. Second hand dealer, that already raises suspicions in your mind, right? Second hand car dealer might raise worse suspicions, however my mother no longer drives so this isn’t about cars.

This particular dealer, well why not name them, RocketNut Quality Used Furniture on Opawa Road, Christchurch, sold my mother a recliner chair that stopped reclining after three days. Mum bought the chair specifically because it could recline, to help reduce swelling in her legs. Without its motorised recliner function, the chair is of little use to her. We were in Norway when Mum messaged to say she couldn’t use the controls. She wondered if she was pushing the buttons correctly.

It turned out the lack of function was nothing to do with how Mum pushed the buttons, but a dysfunctional actuator in the chair (the piston central to the recliner mechanism). Buttons turn out to also be relevant, however. When Mum was sold the chair, it appeared the reclining mechanism might not be working properly but the second hand dealer assured my mother this was a vagary of how the buttons ought to be pushed, not anything wrong with the chair. He still maintains the chair “…was in perfect order when sold…”, despite the discussion at the time of sale about the buttons.

After the chair stopped reclining, my brother contacted RocketNut, who said he would fix the chair. Then RocketNut said he couldn’t fix it. My brother then contacted La-Z-Boy who provided the name of an electrician. The electrician visited Mum’s retirement village and discovered it would cost $400-500 to repair the chair, over half the sale cost of the item.

Both Chris and I have contacted RocketNut to ask him to meet the terms of the Consumer Guarantees Act – Chris in person and me via email. We have pointed out the Act requires goods last a reasonable length of time (which would be longer than 3 days for an item costing $844) and, if goods do not meet the CGA standards, the seller is required to repair, replace, or refund the item. RocketNut says my mother broke the chair and he has no responsibility for it. He will not refer to the requirements of the CGA.

I have said we will take RocketNut to the Disputes Tribunal and he says that’s fine, we will see what is a fair outcome through the Tribunal. The unfairness of having to go through a third party for a resolution, costing more money and taking more time, is not something RocketNut recognises.

By now you might wonder what the title of this blog is referring to – what improper thoughts might I be having? Well, I’m having improper thoughts about RocketNut being an Asian immigrant. I’m thinking he is the sort of person we don’t need to have immigrate to New Zealand. A person who isn’t interested in acknowledging New Zealand consumer law, who just blanks it out.

When we worked in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China, what became most clear to me was how different the values sets of the Chinese we worked with were, compared with my New Zealand values set. New Zealanders talk about loving the environment; the Han Chinese wondered why I minded them dropping plastic bottles in a national park. New Zealanders see native species as something to be revered and protected (at least other than the current government); Han Chinese see living things primarily as a food source e.g. ask if fish seen when snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef are edible. New Zealanders consider the customer to have rights and enshrine them in a CGA; Han Chinese manufacturers focus on how to provide the cheapest possible product they can get away with (our most notable experience was incorrectly-sized drillhole casing that ended up costing drillers hundreds of thousands of dollars). New Zealanders generally squirm at the idea of eating offal, or any part of an animal other than the meat; Han Chinese happily munch up tripe and gnaw marrow from the bones.

There’s no absolute about whose values sets are ‘correct’, but differences make for issues when people from two different cultures cross paths. When I’m in China I get very sick of eating slimy food and wish for something with more crunch; I also don’t want to gnaw bones. When I’m in New Zealand and encounter a Chinese person (we have reasonable evidence RocketNut is Chinese or Singaporean Chinese) who doesn’t want to meet the requirements of NZ law, I’m not happy. So my brain defaults to dislike of what I consider stereotypic Chinese behaviour to be.

Now I’m being racist. I’m taking RocketNut’s behaviour and associating that with a generalisation of Han Chinese behaviour. Of course not all Han Chinese people try to get away with providing minimum acceptable product, any more than all Han Chinese like eating bone marrow or rice. I should take everyone at face value, not generalise based on their race or culture.

I’d like to note at this point that, early on in this article, I voiced a negative opinion about second-hand dealers, second-hand car dealers in particular. Did you feel my comment about those dealers was as unacceptable as a comment about Han Chinese? Why? Or why not? Can we stereotype one group, but not another? Or must we use no stereotypes whatsoever and treat every person as uniquely themselves?

Treating everyone as unique would seem to be the ideal, but it is time and energy intensive. If we have no assumptions from which we can operate, every encounter with a new person must begin with a very large amount of information collection before meaningful interactions can take place, because we use stereotypes as a heuristic to make the world less cognitively demanding.

For example, I'm in a coffee queue with Katherine who I’ve recently seen perform in a country music band. I ask, “What’s your favourite country song?”. Or should I ask, “Do you have a particular music genre you prefer playing?”. Or, “Do you like music?” Katherine might play music because her parents give her approval for playing music, not because she likes country, or even music. Katherine being in a band because of her parents is more likely if Katherine is ten than if she is twenty or fifty; although here I am making assumptions again…

I get why we don’t think stereotyping is a good idea. I understand how racial stereotyping leads to terrible outcomes because one culture considers itself superior and others inferior; we all know what happened in Nazi Germany or colonial New Zealand, or Australia, or Rwanda, or Gaza... However, I’m still left wondering how we navigate a world without making some assumptions about other people, unless we can find ourselves with a good deal more time in which to slowly progress our interactions and be eternally patient with every new connection in order to discover all the details about each person, without assuming anything about them.

And I still really hope that Sarah never gives up economics to become a second hand car dealer.