A complaint has been submitted to an inspection body (IB) by a third party (no client, no installation owner) regarding the results of conformity assessment activities. The IB has specified the complainant as anonymous (only name and gmail address was provided), because the complainant made the same complaint under different names and CAB identified that no people with these names exist. The IB complaints procedure states, that anonymous complaints will not be responded to. CAB did not respond to the complainant.
The IB acted in accordance with its complaints procedure and decided that clause 7.6.3 of the standard ISO/IEC 17020:2012 “Whenever possible, the inspection body shall acknowledge receipt of the complaint or appeal and shall provide the complainant or appellant with progress reports and the outcome” doesn’t apply for the anonymous complainant.
What is the criteria for handling such kind of requests?
September 2024
The standard ISO/IEC 17020:2012 mentions that:
7.5.3 Upon receipt of a complaint, the inspection body shall confirm whether the complaint relates to inspection activities for which it is responsible and, if so, shall deal with it.
7.6.3 Whenever possible, the inspection body shall acknowledge receipt of the complaint or appeal, and shall provide the complainant or appellant with progress reports and the outcome.
7.6.5 Whenever possible, the inspection body shall give formal notice of the end of the complaint and appeals handling process to the complainant or appellant
Then the IB must deal with all the complaints anonymous or not (7.5.3) because this clause doesn’t include “whenever possible”. But if the claimer is anonymous, then it can be considered that it is not possible to “acknowledge receipt and provide with progress reports” (7.6.3) nor “give formal notice of the end of the complaint” (7.6.5).
The Inspection body should consider the risks of anonymous complaints, e.g. may be malicious.